While the stylistic importance of Shakespeare’s sonnets stands without doubt, Samuel Daniel’s Sonnet 46 from Delia offers a somewhat simpler, refreshing take on a generally ornate form. Daniel’s piece serves as a sort of preemptive elegy to his speaker’s beloved, employing more exultation than lamentation, lending it a more optimistic and reverent tone. The speaker spurns the notion of a – in his eyes – dated courtly love, instructing “others [to] sing of knights and paladins” (Daniel 965, 1), and he dismisses words and “agèd accents” that he deems “untimely” (obsolete) (Daniel 965, 2). He simply seeks to sing of his love and her “fair eyes” (Daniel 965, 5), rather than creating an elaborate metaphor to illustrate their beauty. Though Daniel adopts a form of the past in composing a sonnet, he undermines this form from within by updating its language and subject matter to fit the contemporary moment. Like Shakespeare, his speaker does address the march of time as an unstoppable force, but he takes heart in the fact that his words, his “arks” and “trophies” (Daniel 965, 9) will immortalize his beloved – will “fortify [her] name against old age” (Daniel 965, 10) – whatever beauty she may lose in the passing years, and encourages his reader to do the same. The speaker is entirely self-conscious of the simplicity of his words, which he feels might be interpreted as inexperience or lack of talent – “th’error of [his] youth” (Daniel 965, 13) – but these words “show [he] lived and was [her] lover” (Daniel 965, 14), which is all he seeks to show in composing this to her. He does not feel the need to lament their eventual descent into old age, or to aggressively pressure her into procreation before her beauty fades – he just wants to show he loves her. A million overly florid poems could not express true love so clearly, so simply, as this one, and its shift in language also signals a shift toward modernity.

Reading Vendler’s article and then reading Shakespeare’s sonnets, I was struck by exactly how talented Shakespeare was as a sonnet poet. Now, yes this is blindingly obvious, but it comes with further justification. I had never fully appreciated that, as Vendler notes, “Shakespeare comes late in the sonnet tradition, and he is challenged by that very fact to a display of virtuosity, since he is competing against great predecessors” (Vendler 27). That Shakespeare came late in the sonnet tradition is something that I, if I am being honest, never knew. Because, growing up and reading Sonnets in English classes, you assume that the guy basically invented the form. That he was able to take the sonnet and have such an influence that, 400 years later, we are talking about him as the master, is really impressive. Impressive beyond the impressive nature of his poetry, and impressive beyond his list of achievements. It’s impressive because he, before he had first put pen to paper, had to mentally grapple with the fact that he was writing in a form that was 1) on its way out, and 2) already saturated with brilliant poets. I guess what I am saying in this post is that, putting his literary mastery aside, Shakespeare’s mentality is also something to be truly marveled at.

From the first ten sonnets of Shakespeare, it is clear that he is in favor of procreation and believes it to be a disservice to oneself and the world not to do so. However, he moves around on the purpose in doing so. This seems to suggest that there would be many reasons for strongly believing one should procreate. These reasons are generally compatible, but I did find one contradiction. Sonnet 3 encourages procreation for the purpose of self service. Sonnet 3 states that one’s image dies when a person dies, if that person has not procreated. This same sonnet states the beauty of seeing one’s self in the body of a child is an exciting one. These ideas all seem to be in self service. On the other hand, almost every other sonnet states alternative purposes, such as giving the world what it is owed (sonnet 1) or perpetuating beauty. Sonnet 6 even specifically states, “Be not self-willed.” Are the feelings encouraged in sonnet 3 contradictory to the other sonnets of the first 10? Can these reasons for procreation exist in harmony? These thoughts all remind me of the section of the Vendler reading that discusses reading sonnets individually versus as a whole. Reading these sonnets all together give a very different picture of Shakespeare’s beliefs than reading one individually.

I really liked the Foucault reading, more than I expected actually, and reading Marlowe’s sonnet and then Donne and Raleigh’s response, I couldn’t help but think about how it often feels like certain poems “confess” more than others. Marlowe’s sonnet is troubled and ultimately picked apart by Donne and Raleigh. It seems to have more meaning when read side by side with their responses. Re-reading Marlowe’s sonnet after reading all three, it seemed flimsy and almost absurd. There seems to be a certain pleasure, if that’s the word, in seeing the “truth” of the original sonnet unveiled. As Foucault says, “we must ask whether, since the nineteenth century, the scientia sexualis– under the guise of its decent positivism- has not functioned, at least to a certain extent, as an ars erotica” (70).  Foucault’s article ultimately made me wonder how poetry is involved in “the production” of truth– this production perhaps requires a dialogue both between poems and within them.

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Enjoy!