Interesting Dana - I wonder if another aspect of his writing especially those Sonnets is the concept of the day to be a bit more what today we would call preachy - not Poetry at all but I recently got a book the Greek writer Epictetus who wrote a sort of manual that includes short essays on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness - this would have been available to Shakespeare but more, this time in history still had morality plays as well as, so many long poems in our canon of literature from this time that wrap themselves around issues of morality. I wonder if Shakespeare was two things, adding his two cents uncovering how morality plays out in life and then at times spoofing the morality in favor of the reality of life especially, how the passions and love alter what we do as compared to what we should do to be virtuous and effective.
I am thinking this poem's bit of tongue and cheek - #80 - that in one breath elevates till you realize the person is elevated enough so that he is making a comment - He shows himself as less egotistical saying he is a bumbling tongue-tied clod although, saucy he dares to speak of the other's fame that he puts their pride right up there with the gods.
! how I faint when I of you do write,
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.
But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark, inferior far to his,
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
Or, being wracked, I am a worthless boat,
He of tall building, and of goodly pride:
Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
The worst was this, my love was my decay.
Epictetus says things like, " Do not use your body as an occasion for show or luxury.", "People are just people regardless of their talent or influence", "Once we fall, however slightly, into immoderation, momentum gathers and we can be lost to whim.", "A life based on narrow self-interest cannot be esteemed by any honorable measurement." -- just a few quotes that I could see would prompt a wordsmith like Shakespeare to further the explanations with examples of life using clever metaphors in a combo of words.
That last Shakespeare play we discussed - The Tempest - Jonathan found a book about an early sailing ship to the Americas that was blown off course and crash landed in Bermuda - you could see from the history included in the book and our further look into Britain at the time Shakespeare took that story that he would have known since we learned he was an investor and his close supporter was one of the main owner/investors who received the long letter explaining what happened that he would have read that letter and built his play the Tempest around some of the details of that sailing and shipwreck.
Learning all that at the time opened me to the idea that Shakespeare's greater strength is taking the ordinary of the day and building a play or poem using these ordinary events almost like writing material for a soap opera today. Like the soaps the stories are about people we recognize leading lives that we can understand which I do not remember was typical of the writers of his day. But you have to give him - he sure had a way with words expressing in new ways these observations. Somehow learning how he built his stories took away some of the mystic and acclaim that is typical of academics and now I can enjoy reading him more than as if a special author whose books should be behind a locked vitrine wreathed in laurel.
