[New-Poetry] for the Bob-list

[Robin Hamilton]

From: Bob Grumman

<<
I'm right now trying to do a super-full analysis of Shakespeare's "Sonnet 
18," "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day."  My aim is to determine what 
makes it a major poem.  I don't anticipate finsing anything innovational 
about it.
>>

I have a major problem with your analysis of Sonnet 18 on your blog, Bob, 
focused on where you say:

"It happily evoked a peak phase of courtship (heterosexual courtship, in my 
reading of it)."

I think, by reading the sonnet in isolation, you under-rate its radical 
nature.

(The following assumes, of course, that one accepts the sequence of the 1608 
Thorpe printing.)

The sonnet follows seventeen, all of which are addressed to a young man, 
exhorting him to marry and beget offspring.

Then we have sonnet 18, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" which 
looks, on the face of it, a movement to a much more familiar scenario.

Except that half way through the next (connected) sonnet, "Deuouring time 
blunt thou the Lyons pawes," we find in line 11, "Him in thy cour{s}e 
vntainted doe allow," and it begins to appear that the addressee of the 
preceeding sonnet 18 is male.  This is confirmed by Sonnet 20, "A Womans 
face with natures owne hand painted."

The result is that sonnet 18 has to be *re-read from a completely different 
angle than a first (or virgin) reading would imply.

Fairly radical that, surely?

Robin

(My text of the sonnets is taken from Hardy Cook's internet edition:

        http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/ret/shakespeare/1609.html

R.)