William Shakespeare wrote a hundred
and fifty four sonnets. The theme of almost every one of these sonnets is love.
However, it is to Shakespeare’s credit that he does not make love seem boring -
he documents love in verse in its many varying shades and moods.
We do not know who the protagonist
of the sonnets is. Unless indisputable evidence is discovered on the matter, we
will never know whether Shakespeare was channeling his personal feelings
through the poems. This essay treats Shakespeare’s sonnets as a work of
fiction, similar to his plays.
The object of the protagonist’s
affections in the sonnets appears to be a fair young youth, whom the poet
obsessively describes in the minutest of detail, sometimes bordering on and, on
occasion, crossing over to hyperbole. Notice Sonnet 18, where the poet starts
by comparing the youth to a summer’s day. Later, this comparison morphs into
the youth becoming summer itself – the standard by which all truth and beauty
are adjudged.
The jury is still out on whether the
protagonist is gay (there’s been no conclusive evidence). However, a reading of
Sonnet 20, where the poet refers to the youth as “master-mistress of my
passion” causes even the most dispassionate reader to stop and ponder about its
implications on the relationship between the protagonist and the youth. Even by
the literary standards of that period, when it was commonplace for men to
express their love and affection (not necessarily sexual) for their male
friends (popularly dubbed as “bromance” today), Sonnet 20 seems to be waving
the gay-pride flag.
This romantic love that the protagonist
feels for the youth is brought into sharper focus when he starts to spew bile
on the dark lady that the youth seems to have taken up with. Twenty-four of
Shakespeare’s sonnets are addressed to this woman. In Sonnet 144, the
protagonist favours the warmth of the fair youth’s body to that of the dark
lady. And he squarely hangs the blame for the affair between the dark lady and
the youth around the neck of the dark lady. In the poet’s mind, the dark lady
is a raven-haired temptress and vixen who parades her absence of morals and
virtues to prey on the sexual needs of young men, including the fair youth,
thus separating the protagonist from the youth.
In Sonnet 80, we see another aspect
of the jealous streak in the protagonist. The protagonist is unsettled by the
competition that he faces in his admiration for the youth from a rival poet.
However, even here, we see a selfless character to the protagonist, who, even
though he feels tongue-tied in the praise competition that he is engaged in
with the rival poet, believes that there’s more life in one eye of the youth
than which either of the two poets can sufficiently praise.
However, despite the protagonist’s
strong romantic feelings for the youth, we see more evidence of the selfless
character of the protagonist when he pleads with the youth to marry a woman and
procreate; to beget cherubic children who will look just like their father,
thus ensuring his immortality. In sonnet 17, the poet even goes so far as to
say that the fair youth will be immortalized twice: firstly, through the
youth’s children and secondly, through the poet’s verses.
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