Our group decided that Shakespeare’s Sonnet 8 falls into Vendler’s category of the Perceptual: the speaker observes the subject from on high, and draws a metaphor between the subject’s dislike of the music he listens to and his desire remain single. Shakespeare employs the conceit of music to encourage—as in the other sonnets we have read thus far—the subject to gain a partner. The auditory experience here works on several levels: the second quatrain, describing the “offend[ing]” and “confound[ing]” of the subject and listener, sounds choppy, and contains hard “c” sounds. The third quatrain, in which Shakespeare remarks that music played in harmony trumps that of a single note, the “o” and “i” vowels stand out more: “Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,/ Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,/ Resembling sire and child and happy mother/ Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing,” giving that section of the sonnet a more open and enjoyable sound. We had trouble deciphering the logic of the sonnet. For one, why would someone listen to music if not enjoying it? Is this about indulgence in unhappiness? We did wonder about Shakespeare’s perhaps homosexual connotations in including the line concerning mutuality: “Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.”
Alex and Mariam, please step in!
Diving a little deeper into the image of the chord. Here it is in the fourth quatrain:
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,
Resembling sire and child and happy mother
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing;
So, through positive descriptions like “sweet,” “happy,” and “pleasing,” the image seems to be in favor of the sire-child-mother family unit. However, the image itself collapses the different identities/people into one—three different sounds, three different vibrations are transformed into just ONE “pleasing” note. There’s no suggestion that the triad could be richer for the different parts, that the three sounds together produce a better sound than the one note ever could. And so while this quatrain is advocating for the traditional family unit, it also is suggestive of how much of his own identity the young man would need to give up to enter it. Moreover, in the third line of the quatrain, “happy” goes with “mother,” NOT with “sire.” What does the young man get out of this arrangement? Even with the threat of the mathematical dictum (“Thou single wilt prove none”) in the couplet, it’s not clear to me exactly where this sonnet is landing re: young man’s marriage.
The question Carly posed, “why would someone listen to music if not enjoying it?” could be looked at from another perspective. When reading sonnet 8 and Shakespeare mentions that the music makes the young man sad, I assumed that the young man wasn’t necessarily unhappy. From an outside view it would seem as if the man is sad because he did not fulfill his duties as a man ( to reproduce and get married), but if the young man is satisfied in his decision to not procreate, then the music shouldn’t make him sad. As readers, the young man does not have a voice, so we don’t have a primary account of how he feels, instead we are receiving information from a secondary source (the writer). Line 4 suggests that the young man takes pleasure in being annoyed, and I think this is a better description of his emotions. The young man isn’t unhappy because he has failed to marry, but he could be annoyed because he doesn’t want to be told do what he is against.
I initially had the same reaction to Carly’s question, Mariam. Line four does seem to suggest that the subject is listening to sad music to reflect his already unhappy mood. This interpretation might explain the confusing logic that Carly pointed out; however, after a closer reading, I don’t think this interpretation is accurate. As the poem progresses, the reader can see movement from cacophony to harmony. The cognative dissonance displayed in the first quatrain (by the subject who hates music but who is listening to music) is reflected in the rhyme scheme. Throughout the first quatrain, antithetical ideas are paired by rhyme (sadly with gladly, joy with annoy). As Carly pointed out, the second quatrain is full of harsh-sounding, hard c sounds. Moreover, “sounds” is paired by rhyme to “confounds,” further reinforcing the theme of disharmony. The tension is eventually eased by the last quatrain’s focus on order and harmony. Not only does the quatrain describe the harmony produced by both a family and a lute, it also pairs the words “ordering” and “sing,” suggesting that the cacophony present in the first quatrain has relaxed into a “pleasing note.”