Imagine, dear reader, that five hundred years from now all the James Bond films have been lost, but people are still watching Austin Powers.Sonnet 21 is not a good sonnet. In fact, it's a bad sonnet. I doubt you've ever noticed it. If you have read it, you probably moved straight on to Sonnet 22 without giving it another thought, and I wouldn't blame you if you did.
But Sonnet 21 is quite peculiarly bad and it gets worse the more you look at it. Here it is in full. Afterwards I shall explain what's wrong with it. Then I shall give you my fantastic theory on why it's like that.
So is it not with me as with that Muse,
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare
With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,
With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare,
That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.
O! let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother's child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixed in heaven's air:
Let them say more that like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
Many things are wrong with this sonnet: duplication of rhyme, inelegant repetition, tautology, faulty imagery, stupid words, pointless ambiguity and ill-matched lists. Let's take them one by one.
Duplication of rhyme
The second quatrain goes air-ems-air-ems, and the third goes ite-air-ite-air. You can't do that. Shakespeare doesn't do that. In no other sonnet does he allow himself to repeat a rhyme, because it's awkward and it's lazy and it doesn't work.
Inelegant Repetition
Shakespeare repeats the phrase Heaven's air to no rhetorical purpose. It's fine to repeat a phrase for effect (We will fight them on the beaches. We will fight them in the fields.). But to do that you need to organise your repetitions; to repeat something without reason or structure is just sloppy.
Tautology
Heaven's air is a tautology. Where else would the air be? What else is heaven? Shakespeare was stupidly repeating a phrase that was already stupid.
Faulty Imagery
Both lines involving Heaven's air have ill-formed metaphors. How can the air hem something? The image of a hem is taken from needlework. Heaven's tapestry might hem in a huge rondure, but heaven's tautologous air cannot.
Nor is air a suitable material for fixing gold candles. The walls of creation might hold many candelabra, but heaven's air can't. Imagine trying to get the wall-plugs to stay in place.
Contrary to popular belief, Shakespeare did not mix his metaphors: taking arms against a sea is not a confusion, but a deliberate image of futility.
Stupid Words
Couplement and rondure are both silly, latinate words. The word couplement does crop up in Love's Labours Lost, where it used by Don Adriano De Armado whose language is so hifalutin that he "speaks not like a man of God's making". Shakespeare knew couplement was ridiculous, rondure he just made up.
Pointless Ambiguity
Painted in the second line is odd. Does it refer to make-up, as is usual in Shakespeare? If so, the idea isn't taken any further. One would expect Shakespeare to go on about how his love is naturally beautiful, and the other's love is all cosmetics. Or is it to do with painting, as in art? It's ambiguous, but it's an ambiguity that adds nothing to the poem.
Ill-Matched Lists
"With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems" is not a proper group.
Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best -
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow -
That's a proper group: five parts of the body. Sun, moon, earth and stars would make a proper group: but in this line you switch from heavenly bodies to gems. Moreover, you do so awkwardly because the earth looks as though it fits with sun and moon, before you realise that it's the earth's gems that he's talking about. This one is really puzzling. It would be so easy for Shakespeare to have pulled out earth, air, fire, water or any other conventional group. Why this mismatched gallimaufry?
So much for the problems. Here's one solution. Shakespeare was not writing about bad poetry in general. He was writing about one particular bad poem.
That original poem would have these faults:
1) Duplication of rhyme.
2) The phrase heaven's air
3) A misplaced needlework metaphor
4) References to sun, moon, earth and sea's rich gems, April flowers etc.
5) Preposterous praise
6) Endless comparisons
7) Long, fatuous, Latinate words
8) Something to do with painting
9) General awfulness
How did this poem actually go? We don't know. It is lost, gone and vanished like an old oak table. But it is possible to reconstruct it. And, just for you, dear reader, I have done exactly that. Aren't I kind? Here is my (deliberately awful) original.
I saw a portrait of my love today
Yet, though the painter failed not in his art,
A brush and human hand could not portray
The image tapestried upon my heart.
The sun itself cannot her brightness feign
The pulchrous moon, beside her, is not fair.
Sea-sapphires counterfeit her eyes in vain,
Red rubies to her lips shall not compare.
Frail Nature must within her confines keep
And Art, unpotented, must mutely stare.
The jealous stars must gaze on her and weep
Those golden candles fixed in heaven’s air!
All tellings fade, like April’s first-born flowers;
Her beauty is beyond all earthly powers.
Mr W.H. tells Will that he admires this monstrosity. Shakespeare, miffed, points out all of the faults and then, just to prove his point, writes this response:
So is it not with me as with that Muse,
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare
With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,
With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare,
That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.
O! let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother's child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixed in heaven's air:
Let them say more that like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
It makes a lot more sense now, doesn't it? They are not faults, but parodies: not accidents but allusions. Nor am I merely being kind to dear old Will. You may have noticed that the standard against which I found fault was Shakespeare himself, and Shakespeare is unlikely to be worse than Shakespeare.
As I say, imagine a future where James Bond has been forgotten, but Austin Powers survives.
Could have been worse
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I'm not going to say that it's a brilliant poem. In the first place the classic Italian sonnet, with two quatrains with just two rhymes and two terzines with three rhymes, is to my mind a much more satisfying form than the Shakespearean sonnet with its three quatrains and new rhymes for every one, and then that little distichon at the end. But all Shakespeare's sonnets have that drawback, so it doesn't just apply to this one.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I cannot agree with all your strictures. It seems to me that the subject of the verb 'hems' is 'all things rare'. Read like that it makes sense. And all those disparate images (4) are indeed things the object of Renaissance love poetry is often compared to, and to enumerate them shows how odd they are. After all, Shakespeare does have his anti-Petrarcan moments.
To the casual observer the stars are fixed in the sky, and they are often compared to gold and candles, so I don't find that particular image very outlandish.
What bothers me about this poem is the Muse at the start. Is it a male muse, and does he write poetry? The usual muse is after all female, and inspires poetry.
He must be turning in his grave, where he's busy de-composing.
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