Sonnets 5: Shakespeare, Suckling, Shelley & Pushkin

A look at Shakespeare & the linked sonnets of Sir John Suckling, inter alia.

Arguably the most famous poet in the English language, William Shakespeare, obviously needs no introduction. Of the many legends about him, one of them is that he was born & died on the same date: St George's day (April 23rd), fifty two years being between them of course. St George, conveniently being the patron saint of England.

Warwickshire parish records state that he was baptised on April 26th 1564, his father was a leading citizen of the town of Stratford-Upon-Avon & his mother belonged to the landed gentry of the afore mentioned county shire.

It is generally believed that the sonnets were written in two periods of time; the earlier works being written between 1592-96 around the same time as 'The Merchant of Venice' & 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' & the later sonnets written around 1600-08 between the composition of the later plays of 'Julius Caesar' & 'Hamlet'. It is worth pointing out, however, that not all Shakespearian scholars agree on these dates & many disagree on almost everything.

The sonnets were first published in 1609 for the printer Thomas Thorpe in addition to a three hundred & twenty-nine line poem in Rhyme Royal entitled 'A Lover's Complaint'. The latter poem is now not considered by some scholars to actually be the work of Shakespeare. However they seemed to be quite satisfactorily printed & it was 1640 before another edition was produced. The order of the sonnets themselves being changed slightly.

I do not intend in this column to go into the various controversies surrounding the sonnets. I am not that concerned as to whether they were based on real experiences or not, whether they are in a coherent sequence or not, who the rival poet & dark lady were or were not etc. I especially do not want to speculate on which particular young man the Bard was encouraging to engage in matrimony in the first cycle of seventeen sonnets commencing with sonnet one.

I tend to agree with W.H. Auden, that there has been enough nonsense written about these subjects over the past couple of hundred years, & anyone who wishes to research this literary quagmire of speculation may do so at his or her own leisure.

Although in my opinion; Auden was just as guilty as many others in his own peculiar speculations about the Bard. However, I do agree with the British writer Anthony Holden, that the great mystery of the now famous dedication to the enigmatic Mr W H, is probably the printer acknowledging the source of the acquisition of the sonnets themselves. This was most probably Shakespeare's indigent brother-in-law William Hathaway trying to make a pretty penny out of his famous relative.

This next interesting sonnet is very typical of Shakespeare. He was a master of alliteration in combination with assonance. Take your time & read this poem out aloud. The first quatrain has a comma after the verb wink, & in effect it gives the first line a slight caesura before it proceeds. This apparently simple device beautifully brings out & contrasts the labio-nasal & dental-nasal n & m consonants respectively. As we move into the second line the partial vowel rhymes seem to lead logically to the sibilant sounds at the end of it. These combinations of phonemes & the usage of sibilants are very characteristic of Shakespeare & almost amount to a trademark of sorts. Notice how he uses a great deal of alliteration in combination with the repetition of certain words to give this work such a powerful aural effect. The couplet beautifully rounds off the entire poem. Haven't we all dreamed of a loved one at some time, then awoken to find that it was a dream after all. How perfectly stated is that sentiment in this sonnet?

XLIII

When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow shadow's form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes, be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

This next poem is a bit of an oddity. It was included in the sonnets & yet has the peculiar distinction of being only twelve lines & written entirely in couplets. Whether this was considered a sonnet by the poet or not is another question. One of the concepts I have being trying to promulgate in this series of columns about the sonnet is that, as a form, it was not always considered as fixed as we tend to think it is today. Indeed, this may have just as much been considered a sonnet to Shakespeare as any of the others he wrote. Of course, that is if he is in fact the author. It does not seem to be his best work! We will probably never know for certain.

CXXVI

O thou, my lovely boy, who is in thy power
Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st
Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'st;
If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack
As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!
She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:
Her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be,
And her quietus is to render thee.

Perhaps we should give Matthew Arnold the last say on the Bard:

Shakespeare (A sonnet on)

Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill
That to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the Heaven of Heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foil'd searching of mortality:
And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,
Didst walk on Earth unguess'd at. Better so!
All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow,
find their sole voice in that victorious brow.

Matthew Arnold



Sir John Suckling (1609-1642) was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was descended from an old Norfolk family & inherited large estates. He travelled in Europe & was knighted on his return. His was described by John Aubrey (1626-1697) the English antiquarian as being ' the greatest gallant of his time, and the greatest gamester, both for bowling and cards, so that no shopkeeper would trust him for 6d'. In fact Aubrey believed that he invented the game of Cribbage. He supposedly had a sparkling wit and was also great admirer of the works of Shakespeare. His chief works are included in Fragmenta Aurea (1646) which include poems, plays, letters & tracts. According to Aubrey he committed suicide in Paris.

Sonnet

Of thee (kind boy) I ask no red and white
To make up my delight,
No odd becoming graces,
Black eyes, or little know-not-whats, in faces;
Make me but mad enough, give me good store
Of love, for her I court,
I ask no more,
'Tis love in love that makes the sport.

There's no such thing as that we beauty call,
It is meer cosenage all;
For though some long ago
Lik'd certain colours mingled so and so,
That doth not tie me now from chusing new;
If I fancy take
To black and blue,
That fancy doth it beauty make.

'Tis not the meat, but 'tis the appetite
Makes eating a delight,
And if I like one dish
More than another, that a Pheasant is;
What in our watches, that in us is found,
So to the height and nick
We up be wound,
No matter by what hand or trick.

Sonnet

Oh! for some honest lovers ghost,
Some kind unbodied post
Sent from the shades below.
I strangely long to know
Whether the noble Chaplets wear,
Those that their mistresse scorn did bear,
Or those that were us'd kindly.

For what-so-e'er they tell us here
To make those sufferings dear,
'Twill there I fear be found,
That to the being crown'd,
T'have lov'd alone will not suffice,
Unlesse we also have been wise,
And have our Loves enjoy'd.

What posture can we think him in,
That here unlov'd agen
Departs and's thither gone
Where each sits by his own?
Or how can that Elizium be
Where I my Mistresse still must see
Circled in others Arms?

For there the judges are all just,
And Sophonisba must
Be his whom she held dear;
Not his who lov'd her here:
The sweet Philoclea since she died
Lies by her Pirocles his side
Not by Amphialus.

Some Bayes (perchance) or Myrtle bough
For difference crowns the brow
Of those kind souls that were
The noble Martyrs here;
And if that be the only odds,
(As who can tell) ye kinder Gods,
Give me the woman here.

(Fragmenta Aurea 1646)

What are we to make of these two apparently linked poems? Are they indeed sonnets? The first comprises of three connected verses with a definite rhyme scheme. The verses of eight lines rhyme AA BB CD CD. This makes the whole sequence twenty eight lines of iambic pentameter. The syllable count is also not totally regular either. The second sonnet chain is different yet again. Five stanzas of seven lines consisting of a slightly inconsistent rhyme scheme that seems to be based on couplets. Perhaps Sir John had more liberal views on the interpretation of the sonnet than we do today!




Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was born at Field Place, Sussex. Although energetic, imaginative & mischievous as a child he was eventually educated at Eton & Oxford. At Oxford he read radical authors such as Paine & Godwin & in March 1811 was summarily rusticated (expelled) for distributing a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism with his friend T.J. Hogg. He was drowned in August 1822 when his small schooner the 'Ariel' sank in a squall. To her dying day Mary Shelley believed the design of the schooner was a flawed one & the Royal Navy were responsible in part for not making this known about the design of the class of boat. Which was originally designed for the Admiralty & abandoned by it after only a short time. Many Nautical experts are now of the opinion that the design was unstable in squalls & sudden storms. Although there is an argument for dwelling on his intellectual arrogance, abstraction & often nauseating self-pity, Shelley was an incredibly original & imaginative writer. His hatred of injustice & oppression are evident in much of his poetry. This is ably interspersed with an admirable intellectual courage & often wickedly mischievous sense of humour.

Ozymandius

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandius, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty and depair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

This poem was printed in The Examiner by Hunt in January 1818. He had recently finished work on at least a couple of his long narrative projects. It was written in 1817 however, after Shelley had been reading the Hymns of Homer & the Iliad. Mary Shelley noted that he seemed to have lost his eager spirit which, 'believed he could change things for the betterment of mankind', & had become rather contemplative. He seemed to find great solace in the classics. He did not excel in the sonnet as a form, possibly because of his temperament, which seemed to dislike the discipline of imposed forms of any description. The sonnet itself has been criticised by many as not being totally successful as a poem, but it is possibly one of the most famous of any of his works. I think that its brilliance as a poem is in the fact that he presents the irony of the statue of the famous king (Ramses II) instead of taking an ironical tone in the narrative itself. And because of this I think we can overlook such tautological phrases as 'the decay of that colossal wreck'. It is in essence an Italian sonnet but with an odd almost unique rhyme scheme.





Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799. He is considered to be one of the most important & influential of Russian poets & writers. In fact many Russians believe that their literature did not start until Pushkin. Not unlike Shakespeare in England he set a standard of beauty in the Russian language that has never been surpassed. After a brief flirtation with the pre-Decembrist revolutionaries in 1820 he was exiled in disgrace. With the failure of the Decembrist’s uprising in 1825 & the succession of a new Tsar he gained his freedom. He was married to a young society beauty in 1831. The marriage was not a happy one & his wife shared little of his artistic & intellectual talents or interests. She loved fashionable society & the intrigues of the Imperial Court. Pushkin could ill afford this way of life & many courtiers looked down on him because of his less than prestigious background. Many of his contemporaries were jealous of his genius & started a vile campaign to slander him. This culminated with a vitriolic attack by the Baron Georges d’Anthes, a French royalist in the Russian service, who suggested rumours of an improper liaison between the Tsar & Pushkin’s wife. Duty bound to defend her honour he fought a duel with the aforementioned Baron. Fatally wounded Pushkin died on the 29th of January 1837. His death was mourned throughout Russia as a national disaster.

The Pushkinian sonnet was used by him in his allegorical narrative poem ‘Eugene Onegin’. Each stanza was comprised of a sonnet with an ABABCCDDEFFEGG rhyme scheme. Each line has 4 iambic feet (8 syllables) & to cap it all lines 1, 3,5,6,9 & 12 have feminine rhymes the rest being masculine. The iambic tetrameter sounds odd to English speaker’s ears.

Verse one, Chapter five

That year the season was belated
and autumn lingered, long and slow;
expecting winter, nature waited -
only in January the snow,
night of the second, started flaking.
Next day Tatyana, early waking,
saw through the window, morning-bright,
roofs, flowerbeds, fences, all in white,
panes patterned by the finest printer,
with trees decked in their silvery kit,
and jolly magpies on the flit,
and hills that delicately winter
had with its brilliant mantle crowned -
and glittering whiteness all around.


The peculiar sonnet/stanza form employed by Pushkin (this particular one from chapter five of Eugene Onegin) was possibly developed by the author by the influence of the contes of La Fontaine who had influenced so many other Russian poets. Notice that even in translation this sonnet is punctuated almost like a prose piece & has a predictable advance in flow & scan. If you read carefully you will notice a spin or eddy type effect mid way through the piece before its inevitable conclusion. This was compared by the Russian writer Vladimir Nabakov with the effect that a painted spinning ball or top has. It certainly gives the sonnet a strange almost psychedelic feel.



Bibliography:

William Shakespeare: Anthony Holden, Little Brown & Company, 1999.
Shakespeare: Ivor Brown, Collins, 1951.
The Sonnets: William Shakespeare, Everyman, 1991.
Shelley's Poetical Works: OUP, 1940.
The Critical Sense: Prose & Poetry; James Reeves, HEB, 1991.
The Metaphysical Poets: Ed, Helen Gardener, Penguin Classics, 1986.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature: Ed, M Drabble, OUP.
Nihilists: Ronald Hingley, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968.
Eugene Onegin: Alexander Pushkin, translated by Charles Johnston, Penguin Classics, 1979.
The Romantics on Shakespeare: Ed; Jonathan Bate, New Penguin Shakespeare library, 1992.