Queering the Address Circuit (Shakespeare, Barnfield, Wroth)

Queering the Address Circuit (Shakespeare, Barnfield, Wroth)

The sonnets of William Shakespeare (1564-1616)remain the most popular of their kind. Some attribute this to bardolatry—that is, Shakespeare worship—but the fact remains that Shakespeare reshapedthe sonnet form in striking ways:

I. Structure:

abab cdcd efef gg (usually)

3 quatrains and a couplet(also an octave and a sestet?)

II. Dramatis personae:

1. the speaker is a poet named Will, not to be confused or conflated with the poet William Shakespeare:

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,

And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;

More than enough am I that vex thee still,

To thy sweet will making addition thus

Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious

Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?

Shall will in others seem right gracious

And in my will no fair acceptance shine?

The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,

And in abundance addeth to his store,

So thou being rich in Will add to thy Will

One will of mine to make thy large Will more.

Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;

Think all but one, and me in that one Will. (135)

1. the object of the speaker’s gaze/affection is—for the first 126 sonnets, anyway—a boy, not a woman

1. a rival poet attempts to win this boy away from the speaker

1. the woman who enters the picture (ca. sonnets 127-54) is neither chaste nor aristocratic but “dark” (a sign of poverty) and promiscuous; she is obtainable and obtained by a speaker who finds their sexual experiences exciting but degrading

III. Basic narrative structure:

1. an exhortation for the youth to reproduce (sonnets 1-17)

1. love at a distance (because it is forbidden—but forbidden in what way?) . . .

which prompts an extended meditation on Time and the speaker’s myriad ways (sonnet-writing, of course, but other ways, too) of coming to terms with its inevitable destructiveness (#18-126)

1. the seductiveness of the “Dark Lady” (#127-54)

Caution: given the time constraints of this lecture, this analysis of structure and theme is necessarily oversimplified; I should note, though, that Shakespeare moves beyond the conventional Petrarchan conceits (e.g., the hart/heart; the ship lost at sea) and is unusually rich in his borrowings of diction and formulas from patronage, from religion, from law, from courtship, from diplomacy, from astronomy, and so on.

That said, let’s begin with a procreation sonnet:

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another,

Whose fresh repair if now thou not rewenest,

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose uneared womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime;

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,

Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.

But if thou live rememb’red not to be,

Die single, and thine image dies with thee. (#3)

What seems to be the problem here? What seems to be the speaker’s central concern?

How does the speaker address the youth? Diction? Tone?

Here’s another kind of procreation sonnet, one that might tell usmore about the speaker than it does about the seemingly obstinate youth:

When I consider everything that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment;

That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase,

Cheered and checked even by the selfsame sky,

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

And wear their brave state out of memory;

Then the conceit of this inconstant stay

Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,

Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay

To change your day of youth to sullied night,

And all in war with Time for love of you,

As he takes from you, I ingraft you new. (#15)

What distinguishes this procreation sonnet from the other one?

The speaker seems to be addressing Time’s effects on the addressee, but is it possible that this urgency grows out of Will’s own anxieties?

To put it another way: does this sonnet really have anything to do with the addressee?

The speaker’s desire for the addressee to reproduce exposes another kind of desire, articulated more explicitly in the following sonnet:

A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted

Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;

A woman’s gentle heart but not acquainted

With shifting change as is false women’s fashion;

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,

Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

A man in hue all hues in his controlling,

Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created,

Till Nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,

And by addition me of thee defeated,

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,

Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure. (#20)

In this sonnet Will recapitulates for the addressee (and for us) a creation myth. To understand the cultural implications of this etiological myth, let’s examine the sonnet according to its 4-4-4-2 (and 8-6) structure.As we move through the sonnet, consider the (re)fashioning of gender and the ways in which cultural norms govern notions of acceptable vs. unacceptable desire.

One possible formula:

Quatrain 1 + Quatrain 2 = Misogynistic Octave

Quatrin 3 + Couplet = Origin Myth and Deferral of Desire

Enter the “Dark Lady” stage left (actually, she entered 17 sonnets ago, but this is one of the more interesting treatments of the male/male/female dynamic):

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,

Which like two spirits do suggest me still:

The better angel is a man right fair,

The worser spirit a woman colored ill.

To win me soon to hell, my female evil

Tempteth my better angel from my side,

And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

Wooing his purity with her foul pride.

And whether that my angel be turned fiend

Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;

But being both from me, both to each friend,

I guess one angel in another’s hell.

Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,

Till my bad angel fire my good one out. (#144)

What convention is used to frame this narrative? (Hint: we’ve seen it in Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus)

What do you notice about the speaker’s characterizations of the youth and/vs. the woman?

Finally, what happens by the close of this sonnet that is a departure from the abovementioned convention?

* * *

Theverse of Richard Barnfield (1574-1627) shares Shakespeare’s concern with a triangulated (male/male/female) love affair. It would appear, however, that Barnfield’s poetry stirred more controversy than did Shakespeare’s. (Shakespeare’s sonnets weren’t bowdlerized until the early 1630s.) Consider the epistle dedicatory to the collection of poetry out of which the assigned sonnets were dawn:

To the curteous Gentlemen Readers.

Gentlemen: the last Terme there came forth a little toy of mine, intituled, The affectionate Shepheard: In the which, his Country Content found such friendly fauor, that it hath incouraged me to publish my second fruites. The affectionate Shepheard being the first; howsoeuer vndeseruedly (I protest) I haue beene thought (of some) to haue beene the authour of two Books heretofore. I neede not to name them, because they are too-well knowne already: nor will I deny them, because they are dislik’t; but because they are not mine. This protestation (I hope) will satisfie th’indifferent: and as for them that are maliciously enuious, as I cannot, so I care not to please. Some there were, that did interpret The affectionate Shepheard, otherwise then (in truth) I meant, touching the subiect thereof, to wit, the loue of a Shepheard to a boy; a fault, the which I will not excuse, because I neuer made. Onely this, I will vnshaddow my conceit: being nothing else, but an imitation of Virgill, in the second Eglogue of Alexis. In one or two places (in this Booke) I vse the name of Eliza pastorally: wherein, lest any one should misconster my meaning (as I hope none will) I haue here briefly discouered my harmles conceipt as concerning that name: whereof once (in a simple Shepheards deuice) I wrote this Epigramme:

To this for beautie; fairest on the earth.

Thus, hoping you will beare with my rude conceit of Cynthia, (if for no other cause, yet, for that is the first imitation of the verse of that excellent Poet, Maister Spencer, in his Fayrie Queene) I leaue you to the reading of that, which I so much desire may breed your Delight.

Several things warrant notice:

1. the addressee/intended audience: “curteous gentlemen,” or a coterieaudience comprising (mostly) males

1. Barnfield denies, and in this way calls attention to, the overt homoerotic themes of an earlier work, The affectionate Shepheard

Here are the opening stanzas of that poem:

Scarce had the morning star hid from the light

Heaven’s crimson canopy with stars bespangled,

But I began to rue th’unhappy sight

Of that fair boy that had my heart entangled;

Cursing the time, the place, the sense, the sin;

I came, I saw, I viewed, I slipped in.

If it be sin to love a sweet-faced boy,

(Whose amber locks trussed up in golden trammels,

Dangle adown his lovely cheeks with joy,

When pearl and flowers his fair hair enamels)

If it be sin to love a lovely lad;

Oh then sin I, for whom my soul is sad. (1-12)

1. as the preface to a new collection of poetry, this defense prepares—indeed, encourages—the reader to look for similar themes in the present work

1. the appeal to classical and contemporary models—Virgil and Spenser, respectively—as a way of explaining away the carnal desire of The affectionate Shepheard (this is conventional, but the need to write a justification suggests that this logic remained unconvincing)

Before we leave The affectionate Shepheard, though, we should bear in mind an important distinction (and here you’re going to have to trust me or read the poem for yourself): the love triangle (Daphnis, Ganymede, Queen Guendolen) isn’t, as it is in Shakespeare’s sequence, a triangle at all. Rather, Queen Guendolen stands in the way of—and eventually walks away with—Daphnis’s object of desire (Ganymede). The second part of the poem centers on Daphnis’s attempts at transcendence, all of which appear to have failed. For the poem closes bitterly:

When I poor forlorn man and outcast creature

(Despairing of my love, despised of beauty)

Grew malcontent, scorning his lovely feature

That had disdained my ever zealous duty:

I hied me homeward by the moonshine light;

Forswearing love and all his fond delight. (439-444)

Now let’s consider a sonnet from the collection prefaced by the anxious dedicatory letter:

Sighing, and sadly sitting by my love,

He asked the cause of my heart’s sorrowing,

Conjuring me by heaven’s eternal king

To tell the cause which me so much did move.

Compelled (quoth I), to thee will I confess

Love is the cause, and only love it is

That doth deprive me of my heavenly bliss;

Love is the pain that doth my heart oppress.

And what is she (quoth he) whom thou dost love?

Look in this glass (quoth I), there shalt thou see

The perfect form of my felicity.

When, thinking that it would strange magic prove,

He opened it: and taking off the cover,

He straight perceived himself to be my lover. (#)

What kind of subjectivity is constructed here, and how is it different from the speaker(s) of Shakespeare’s sonnets?

What about this sonnet needs defending?

Although I do not wish to conflate poet and speaker, I think it bears noting 1) that Barnfield didn’t publish much else after the collection containing this sonnet sequence; and 2) that Barnfield’s father eventually disinherited him for reasons that remain unclear.

* * *

The sonnets of Lady Mary Wroth (1587-1651?) redress the conventional subject/object positionality—that is, male subject/female object—in yet another way: in her sequence the woman assumes the position of the speaking, gazing, blazoning subject:

Take heed mine eyes, how you your looks do cast

Lest they betray my heart’s most secret thought,

Be true unto yourselves, for nothing’s bought

More dear than doubt which brings a lover’s fast.

Catch all you watching eyes, ere they be past,

Or take yours fixed where your best love hath sought

The pride of your desires; let them be taught

Their faults for shame, they could no truer last.

Then look, and look with joy for conquest won

Of those that searched your hurt in double kind;
So you kept safe, let them themselves look blind,

Watch, gaze, and mark till they to madness run,

While you, mine eyes enjoy full sight of love

Contented that such happinesses move. (#39)

Here Pamphilia is the one delighting in the gaze.

The transgressiveness of this gesture cannot be overstated. By co-opting the roles and prerogatives of the male subject, Wroth creates a speaker who is in some sense transgender.

How was this move received? Some (Ben Jonson, for instance) enjoyed and were inspired by her verse. Many others, however, found her usurpation of the pen (read: the phallus) disconcerting.

As Meg Lota Brown and Kari McBride point out, “Lady Mary Wroth was called both a whore and a hermaphrodite for publishing her work, the latter term implying that she was a monstrous combination of male (that is, artistic and creative) and female parts” (Women’s Roles in the Renaissance, pg. 15).

Another striking feature of Wroth’s sonnets is the address circuit. The title of the sequence is Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, but who is the addressee of the following stanza?

Am I thus conquered? Have I lost the powers

That to withstand, which joys to ruin me?

Must I be still while in my strength devours,

And captive leads me prisoner, bound, unfree?

Love first shall leave mean’s fancies to them free,

Desire shall quench Love’s flames, spring hate sweet showers,

Love shall loose all his darts, have sight, and see

His shame, and wishings hinder happy hours.

Why should we not Love’s purblind charms resist?

Must we be servile, doing what he list?

No, seek some host to harbor thee: I fly

Thy babish tricks, and freedom do profess.

But O my hurt makes my lost heart confess

I love, and must: So farewell liberty. (#26)

Who is the addressee here? How is this different from the other sonnets we’ve considered? Might this be another way of countering the misogynistic tradition of the sonnet?

* * *

Each of the writers discussed today manipulate address circuit as a way of spicing up a highly conventional poetic form.

The devotional poets of the seventeenth century will do this, too, but in a markedly different way.