Oh boy, what a stark contrast between this batch and what came heretofore. Billy was in a MOOD and that mood was sexual frustration. Not that he didn’t have that before, but he clearly adored his previous subject on a few extra levels and was happy to poetically forgive their faults and continue his pining. The “Dark Lady” appears to have been, unfortunately for her, the vessel of Will’s physical expressions, and he was more than a little conflicted about indulging those primal needs. He saved his apparent cynicism regarding the format and tropes of sonnet collections especially for this beguiling woman. The first few sonnets are clearly piss-takes on the standard sonnet schmaltzfest and completely slag her off in most cunning but insufferable language. Buddy, just because you couldn’t get off with your boyfriend doesn’t mean this lady deserves all your exquisitely spat venom. She let you quench your Will in her cooling well enough times to give you some strange and memorable inspiration, so give her some credit.
What makes this all worse, however, is that his true apple of his eye also gets involved with this anti-muse, creating some juicy afternoon telenovela vibes. The depths of soul-searching he must do to rationalize this unrequited threesome is just *chef’s kiss* incredible. The entire sequence feels like it was written in a bawdyhouse, using the poor strumpet’s bare bottom as a desk as he hopelessly ached for the heart of his faire youth. At least we get an explicit set of sage advice on the difference between love and lust and how it’s all just going to land you with a case of the pox anyhow.
127 - Right out of the gate, William goes all-out hipster on us and claims that he was into "black beauty" before everyone else. Considering that the rest of these falls toward the insulting end of the spectrum, this one sticks its nose up at everyone who goes along with the current day's beauty standards and that everyone should be jealous of his mistress.
129 - Hands down, the most sexually explicit poem of the entire lot, and also the most angry. In that post-coital refractory period, our guy gets super resentful of putting forth his "expense of spirit in a waste of shame." I'm pretty sure not all hetero men feel this terrible after an orgasm, so everyone usually points at this poem as proof that Shakespeare was bisexual, and bitter as hell about getting off with his girlfriend instead of his boyfriend.
130 - Almost as famous at 18, this sonnet infamously outlines how straight up nasty his lady friend is. It may or may not be sardonic, or a total parody of traditional love poetry that holds its subject up as perfection incarnate. Bad breath and wiry hair takes top prize.
135 - The word Will pops up 13 times, and it means exactly what our gutter mind thinks it means.
138 - A bit more sweet than sour, Will speaks of the truthful lies and lying truths that lovers keep between themselves for the sake of love. "And age in love loves not t' have years told" adorably posits that age doesn't matter when you're in love, and it sees not a single wrinkle in their amor's face.
143 - A slightly bizarro (over?)extended metaphor about how his lady is a housewife concentrating too much on capturing her escaped chicken when she should be comforting her babe(Will). Makes her look petty for chasing tail while he's crying like a child.
144 - Shakespeare says he has "two loves" and they are the angel and devil on his shoulders. One is going to burn the other out at some point.
145 - Will diverges from pentameter and goes octosyllabic, causing scholars to believe he wrote this one when he was very young, for it reads like a sophomoric attempt at getting under someone's petticoats. In fact, the phrase "'hate' away" is thought to be a pun on "Hathaway," our boy's wife, Anne.
146 - A meditation on death and how the body is naught but earth and his soul, being a thing immortal as itself, should be the object of our spiritual adornments. If he took his own advice, then he'd be a monk by now.
153 & 154 - Shakespeare wraps up his master's thesis on love with a story cribbed from Greek Anthology by the 6th-century Byzantine poet Scholasticus about the trouble Cupid causes in the world. Falling asleep with his hot firebrand at his side, Cupid is robbed by a bunch of "Dian's maids (virgins)" who put the fire in a nearby well. The water doesn't cool anything, but rather makes everything worse. Obviously, it's about sticking your Ben Johnson into the wrong fig and catching the clap. Therefore, men go to their mistresses for "a cure" and learn that "Love's[actually, LUST'S] fire heats water, water cools not love."
We began this journey with an earnest plea to get it on and end with a trip to the urgent care clinic. Most. Romantic. Sonnets. Ever. This stuff really should be required reading in sex ed class.
When I put down my Arden this week, having read the last lines of every line Shakespeare ever wrote (to our knowledge), I semi-ceremoniously presented myself with a token of my achievement: a silver strawberry and a golden "s" on a necklace. Whenever I wear it, I will recall what I learned about Shakespeare's strawberries while I studied Othello and made the connection about the fruit's underlying theme in Richard III and Henry V: like the strawberry, I have learned to develop myself despite (or because of) the sub-optimal conditions this strange year has afforded everyone, but quietly, I found I can persevere under the shade of the nettles. My hope is that many of us have similarly come to the same conclusion at the close of this plague year of 2020.
Well, that was all he wrote, but I will conclude next week with a coda after I read some appendix material from the Riverside about Shakespeare in performance on stage and screen over the centuries. Also, I shall fawn over my favorite TV discovery of the year.
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