It is interesting in itself to note that William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 146 contains a single line of meter that is one of literary history’s greatest unsolved mysteries. Although there are a variety of minor theories to explain this matter, there are two exceptionally well-founded ideas for the speculation and debate that has ensued between critics and scholars for hundreds of years. First, the second line of the sonnet opens with “My sinful earth,” appearing to be an accidental repetition of the exact same three words which closed the opening line above. Second, when noting this line in its entire published format, academics cannot help but note that the usual, established meter of Shakespeare’s dependable and expected iambic pentameter has blatantly vanished, the tone otherwise destroyed. Widely attributed to have simply been a typographical misprint on the part of the publisher, scholars have offered years of popular speculation as to what words, which would better fit the general scheme of the rest of this work, were probably scrawled in the great playwright’s original quill pen. Although suggestions such as “Fooled by,” “Leagued with,” and “Rebuke” are all excellent possibilities that fit not just the meter but also the message, it seems that “Thrall to” is the most widely accepted proposition. However, when one looks at Sonnet 146 not only to analyze its form but also in question of its matter of subject, one could also speculate that the words “My sinful earth” appear just as they were written, intentionally laid upon the page to further drive the message Shakespeare attempted to convey in this one great example of everything that each of his other sonnets is not.
Reading the volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets in its entirety and accepting that these creations were published without their author’s consent and much to his chagrin, one realizes that he or she is actually reading words of value that were likely never intended for consumption or criticism of the hoi polloi. Many of these sonnets are written in a deeply personal, often-times yearning tone for love and beauty. In fact, there are examples in which the poet could be justifiably described as being enslaved by such entrapping accoutrements. Contrast this to Sonnet 146 where the reader visualizes a tone of intense reflection and somber reverence to something other than seasons of the heart.
Although many of the sonnets are historically acknowledged to have been dispersed and distributed among Shakespeare’s friends and associates, one might ascertain that it was only through the unauthorized publication of the work that the world at large was given a glimpse into the poet’s innermost thoughts and feelings, his intentionally discrete motivations and desires. Each of the sonnets imbues emotions of love and desire in the hearts and guts of anyone drinking the words from the page. Several offer examples of comparisons between what Shakespeare found attractive in people and what he found moving in the wonder of the natural world. However, Sonnet 146 is strikingly dissimilar to the plotted format of comparisons of female beauty to the awe-inspiring seasonal changes, or the infinite other examples in which the man pays reverence to that which appeals most at the surface level of human nature. Sonnet 146 exists as a realization, a meditation, and a prayer. It is a sudden, startling decision to question whether all else that has previously offered motivation may actually be truly superfluous and inconsequential in the bigger and broader questions of the goodness of his human soul. Sonnet 146 is Shakespeare’s hope for a pathway to possible redemption.
Here, in contrast to the other one hundred fifty-three entries, Shakespeare has not optioned to marvel at the libidinous and provoking guile of a woman who moves him to write about such enslavements, nor has he sought to inspire reciprocation from an object of his affection. Instead, the writer is addressing that which lives at his most holy epicenter. The epiphany of his life is that which he laments, realizing it ought to be his greatest and most significant motivation of all. In Sonnet 146, Shakespeare concludes that nothing else can really matter, nor can he ever justify any sense of worthiness for himself if not for finding inner goodness and spiritual well being. One might argue that Sonnet 146 is a chicken soup sonnet for Shakespeare’s soul.
There appears to be little criticism or scholarly analysis to dispute what Shakespeare’s intentions were in the meat of this particular sonnet, and there also appears to be little evidence to refute that it bears overwhelming dissimilarities to the litany of other examples offered by the poet and playwright. However, the major controversy and debate that swells over a reading of these fourteen lines of mostly iambic pentameter is in the shape and form and rhythm of the poem in itself.
Accepting that most can agree on the mood and the message of the work, then one can really take a very deeply investigative approach to looking at another end of the spectrum of the great mystery over the opening of the second line in those three brief words: “My sinful earth.” The great debate exists because the main idea that has been generally accepted through years of academia is that the original publisher erred in the printing of this work by mistakenly reprinting the three word phrase twice. The ideas that have ebbed and flowed since have been over what words were originally intended by the man who wrote the work sometime before the close of the sixteenth century. Of course, that the theory of a misprint has been generally accepted is of no great surprise as the iambic pentameter that form the remaining twelve lines of this and the entirety of his other works is completely absent, causing the overall form of the poem to subsequently be displaced. However, one could question whether or not that three word phrase that closes the opening line of poetry only to open the line that follows was intentionally put upon the page. Perhaps Shakespeare intended not only to break free from the shackles that contained him in his meanderings through love and vanity and reverence for the deception of appearances but also to further exemplify his lament in the sudden, unexpected fracture of his known style of writing.
Naturally, anyone reviewing any anti-New Historical Criticism historical criticism such as this one could very well argue that the idea makes as little sense as finding the answer to this speculated point through deconstruction of Sonnet 146; however, the idea may definitely make sense when relating this particular sonnet to the many other examples of glaring contrast that readers have to lay by its side. The world will likely never know, beyond a shadow of any reasonable doubt, just what specific phrase Shakespeare intended to open the second line of a masterpiece such as Sonnet 146, but maybe the debate matters not. Furthermore, by the estimations of the man who wrote the poem in the effort of conveying a process of thought quite unlike any of the other poems, it may not really matter what words appear at the surface of Shakespeare’s “sinful earth”, only the meaning at the heart of his “Poor soul.”
Just as Shakespeare was a man of many words, he was also a man who observed and understood and found universal themes to which centuries of men and women have been able to relate. Therefore, perhaps, one must wonder whether or not such a debate would have pleased the man in the end. Sonnet 146 explicitly warns that only the worms are “inheritors of this excess” and that it is the love and truth and wisdom and goodness on the inside that matters most because “death once dead, there’s no more dying then.”
No comments:
Post a Comment