Sonnet 128
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Sonnet 128 is one of William Shakespeare's sonnets.
Synopsis
Sonnet 128 is comparable to the sonnet in Romeo and Juliet in which Romeo pleads for a first kiss. Like that pilgrim/saint tête-à-tête, this sonnet is set in a public musical celebration. Shakespeare watches his dark lady play the keyboard virginal (or Bassano built clavichord), captivated by her back swaying with the melody. Like Romeo, he longs for a kiss, but in this sonnet he envies the jacks (wooden keys) that the lady's playing fingers "tickle" while trilling the notes. Perhaps he also envies the other men (Jacks) standing around the lady. Surely, this is an amusing scene to Shakespeare because he secretly is having an affair with the dark lady. He decides not to envy those keys—although he would like to be tickled as they are—but hopes instead to receive a kiss on his lips. Fred Blick points out that this plea for a "kiss", leaving the fingers to the jacks, is a compromise, just as the tuning of the virginal or other keyboard instrument is, in musical temperament, a compromise.
Structure
Sonnet 128 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 2nd line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:
× / × / × / × / × / Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds (128.2)
- / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.
The 8th line exhibits a rightward movement of the first ictus (resulting in a four-position figure, × × / /
, sometimes referred to as a minor ionic); potentially there is also a second minor ionic (from movement of the third ictus) but this depends upon the reader's emphasis:
× × / / × × / / × / At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand. (128.8)
Potential minor ionics also occur in lines 3, 7, and 9.
Line 12 could begin regularly, with an initial reversal, or with a minor ionic; the antithesis between "dead wood" and "living lips" suggests the latter.
The meter strongly suggests that line 5's "envy" should be stressed on the second syllable (a valid pronunciation in Shakespeare's time).[2]
Context
Shakespeare's sonnets were published in 1609. It is not certain when each of the sonnets were written but there is evidence to suggest that they were written privately and not meant to be published. William Wordsworth even suggests that the sonnets were how Shakespeare "unlocked his heart". There are only two sonnets that Shakespeare writes that are specifically about music, and those are Sonnet 8 and Sonnet 128. No one is certain if Shakespeare wrote the sonnets in order or if they should form a complete sequence.[3] However it is clear that they offer an insight that "Shakespeare's capacity to represent the imaginative states of other people".[3]
Shakespeare was born in the
Analysis
In her article "The Gaze of the Listener: Shakespeare's Sonnet 128 and Early Modern Discourses of Music and Gender", Regula Hohl Trillini argues that that "[the] much deprecated cruxes and mixed metaphors are read not as an authorial oversights but as a significant elaboration of contradictions in the English discourse on musical performance, particularly when undertaken by women".[5]
Sonnet 128 is one of the sonnets in the
Agreeing with Hohl Trillini, Paul Edmondson in his book, "Shakespeare's Sonnets" writes about the speaker's lover in Sonnet 128. Edmondson agrees that the sonnet belongs in the
Musical imagery
Sonnet 128 is one of the few musical sonnets of Shakespeare's sonnets. Sonnet 128 draws many similarities to Shakespeare's Sonnet 8, and its musical language and theme. Both sonnets refer "my musike", throughout drawing a clear connection to each other.[5] In addition, both sonnets use, a "figurative use of 'music,'" which appears nowhere else in Shakespeare's sonnets.[5] The use of similar language throughout Sonnet 8 and Sonnet 128 continues the musical theme in Shakespeare's sonnets, showing an obvious correlation between the two poems.
Its number suggests, like
The main imagery that Shakespeare invokes in this poem is of a woman playing a
Line 5 mentions jacks, which are the plucking mechanisms on the harpsichord. The jacks "nimble leap" which is both representative of the music being played and the men who are trying to show off to win the love interest's attention. Davis explains Shakespeare often uses the word "Jack" as a reference to ordinary other men but in this case it can have a double meaning of both the technology of the instrument and the woman's other male suitors.[7] Line 13 also provides reference to "saucy jacks" which implies that the jacks are a rather impure and impudent lot. There is also a strong sexual innuendo where the word "jacks" makes a reference to fellatio. Shakespeare asserts that this woman can lend her fingers to these vulgar men but would much prefer her lips and her loving affections.
Criticisms
Sonnet 128 is one of Shakespeare's most highly criticized sonnets, some even believing that because Sonnet 128 is so far from Shakespeare's usual sonnets that it may be unauthentic.
On the other hand, J.A. Fort offers a marginal defense of Sonnet 128 claiming that because the sonnet was about the
Interpretations
- Juliet Stevenson, for the 2002 compilation album, When Love Speaks (EMI Classics)
References
- OCLC 4770201.
- ^ Booth 2000, p. 440.
- ^ a b Edmondson, Paul. Shakespeare's Sonnets. Oxford University Press. 2014.
- ^ a b Stephenson, Henry Thew. Life in Shakespeare's London From Shakespeare's London. New York: H. Holt, 1905
- ^ a b c d e f Trillini, Regula Hohl. "The Gaze Of The Listener: Shakespeare's Sonnet 128 And Early Modern Discourses Of Music And Gender." Music And Letters 1 (2008): 1. Project MUSE. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.
- ^ Edmondson, Paul, and Stanley W. Wells. Shakespeare's Sonnets. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 25 Nov. 2014
- ^ Davis, J. Maddison, ed. The Shakespeare Name and Place Dictionary. N.p.: Routledge, 2012. Print.
- ^ a b c d Purdum, Richard. "Shakespeare's Sonnet 128." The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 1964: 235. JSTOR Journals. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.
Further reading
- First edition and facsimile
- Shakespeare, William (1609). Shake-speares Sonnets: Never Before Imprinted. London: Thomas Thorpe.
- OCLC 458829162.
- Variorum editions
- OCLC 234756.
- Modern critical editions
- Atkins, Carl D., ed. (2007). Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary. Madison: OCLC 86090499.
- OCLC 2968040.
- Burrow, Colin, ed. (2002). The Complete Sonnets and Poems. OCLC 48532938.
- OCLC 32272082.
- OCLC 15018446.
- Mowat, Barbara A.; Werstine, Paul, eds. (2006). Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems. OCLC 64594469.
- OCLC 46683809.
- OCLC 36806589.