The Sonnets of Shakespeare: Sonnet 33. Edward de Vere's Memorial For His Son.

33

FVII many a glorious morning haue I ʃeene.

Flatter the mountaine tops with ʃoueraine eie,

Kiʃʃing with golden face the meddowes greene;

Guilding pale ʃtreames with heauenly alcumy:

Anon permit the baʃeʃt cloud to ride.

With ougly rack on his celeʃtiall face,

And from the for-lorne world his viʃage hide

Stealing vnʃcene to weʃt with this diʃgrace

Euen ʃo my Sunne one early morne did ʃhine.

With all triumphant ʃplendor on my brow,

But out alack he was but one houre mine,

The region cloude hath masked him from me now.

Yet him for this, my loue no whit diʃdaineth.

Suns of the world may ʃtaine; when heauens ʃun ʃtaineth.

Notes on the text.

From Rollins:

8. west] the west Steevens conj. (Malone.), rest] Steevens conj. (Malone.)

[Editor's note] Rollins informs us that Steevens and Malone chose “rest” instead of “west” in the eighth line. Surely this because the implication of death in the original west seemed unacceptably problematical to them — they being under the misconception that the sonnet could not be about a death.

Rollins, 8. this] his. Walker conj. (Critical Examination, i860, II, 223), Lowell conj., 1863 (loc. cit.),

From Malone:

8. Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:] The article the may have been omitted through necessity; yet I believe our author wrote, to rest. Stevens.

From Beeching [@90]:

2. sovereign] The sun is compared to a monarch whose eye "flatters" whatever it rests upon.

4. alchymy] " So in King John III, i, 77:

" The glorious sun

Stays in his course and plays the alchemist" (S.).

But the thought and expression in King John are less refined; the passage continues:

Turning with splendour of his precious eye

The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold

6. rack] clouds of the upper air, called in line 12 "region cloud."

Cf. Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum: "The winds in the upper region, which move the clouds above, which we call the rack, pass without noise,'' quoted by Dyce. For a parallel passage in Henry IV, see Introduction, page XXV.

12. region cloud] cloud of the sky.

14. stain] grow dim. The word is used transitively in 35. 3.

From Purdy:

6. ougly] ugly

8. unscene] unseen

11. But one hour mine] A poetic trope. The literal time Vere's son lived is said, by his wife, to have been two days.

IN dolefull wayes I spend the wealth of my time:

*

...the two days of my son.

           A. Cecil, Countess of Oxford.

14. Suns of the world] suns of the world = sons

Commentary:

Those who have read my “Edward de Vere's Memorial For His Son, Who Died at Birth May 1583.” know that I assign this sonnet as an elegy on Vere's first son who died (according to Anne, Countess of Oxford) two days after his birth. The commentary to follow is seriously tortured because the authors feel absolutely obligated to make it fit the Oxford-Southampton amour myth that took over nearly all of scholarship on since Drake's conjecture. Nevertheless, it is instructive and sometimes even informative.

In Alden:

Spalding: [From Sonnets 33-38 it is clear that the friend] has said or done something that has gone to Sh.'s heart like a knife. [This is not the intrigue of S. 40-42, but, as is suggested by 36-37, an unwillingness or refusal on the friend's part, perhaps taunted by his associates, to admit his friendship with Sh.] (Gent. Mag., 242: 307.) Dowden: A new group seems to begin with this sonnet. It introduces the wrongs done to Sh. by his friend. [90]

Dowden: A new group seems to begin with this sonnet. It introduces the wrongs done to Sh. by his friend. [90]

Wyndham: The first of the more immediately personal garlands [forms the group 33-42]. . . . The biographical interest of this group has won it an undeserved attention at the expense of others. [90]

In Rollins:

Sarrazin (Aus Sh.s Meisterwerkstatt, 1906, p. 221) remarks that 33 “definitely indicates a long residence in a mountainous region, and that too in a land rich in sunlight, not, therefore, in England (Wales) or Scotland, but rather in the south.” [I.91]

Adams: It seems to me that Sonnets 33 and 34 imply that the friend had been guilty of a graver sin than merely temporarily abandoning the companionship of the poet; cf. the strong words used (“basest,” “ugly,” “disgrace,” “stain,” “base,” “rotten,” “salve,” “wound,” “shame,” “grief,” “repent,” “loss,” “offender’s,” “sorrow,” “relief,” “strong offence,” “cross,” “tears,” and “ill deeds”). [I.95]

R. H. Darby in 1939 (Jahrbuch, LXXV, 135-138).... decided that Sh. had in mind “the solar eclipse of May 20, 1594, [which] was preceded by a partial eclipse of the moon on May 8,” because the “Roses,” “canker,” and “sweetest bud” “suggest the later spring”; and because the “Cloudes” of 35 plus similar clouds and rain in 28.10, 33.5, 12, 34.3-6, make up “a concentration of ‘wet’ signs [which] would appear to indicate an unusually rainy season. This perfectly fits the spring of 1594.” [II.62]

In Rendall:

33‐36, 63‐66, 71‐74, and 88‐91 fall into natural quartets. [84]

Sonnets 33‐42: Sexual Strain

At this point the course of friendship was crossed by a convulsive rift. Hallam voiced the compunctions of Victorian sentiment, when in presence of these numbers he expressed the wish that Shakespeare had never written the Sonnets. But the days of reticence are over, and it rests with the critic to deal faithfully and fairly with the issues raised. Canons of sexual morality, and of propriety, in practice and still more in profession, are surprisingly volatile. [176-7]

[Editor's note: Rendall is surprisingly at a loss here. He needs the poem to refer to Southampton but cannot figure how. He tries declaring that several quartets of sonnets must be consulted to understand this one. No particular relationship can be shown in the quartets. There is no “sexual strain” anywhere in Sonnet 33. There is no lover much less dissatisfaction with a lover.]

After the short‐lived storms of [sonnets] 33‐36 and 40‐42, it disappears, except in its effects, from the Sonnets, and the scars it left yielded later fruit of healing repentance. [177]

[Editor's note: The traditional assignment of this sonnet to a series of other sonnets about a “sensual fault” is simply without basis. It is simply an attempt to justify the claim that the sonnets are to Southampton. Without the need to justify Southampton as object, the sonnets in question do not “fall into natural quartets” at all.

Sonnets 35 & 36 are, indeed, about a sensual fault (or the accusation of one) but just what fault, in particular, will have to wait until we address those sonnets.]

In Purdy:

If I may venture a gloss on what the poem says: I felt at that moment like I have felt before majestic, sun-drenched landscapes I have viewed with wonder, then was suddenly surprised, without warning (like the transition between these two quatrains), the sun being swallowed up in clouds “stealing unseen to west” toward the disgrace, the unpleasantness of death. That’s just what that moment was like when my sun/son was for one hour with me and then disappeared behind the clouds to be seen no more as he stole away toward the west (i.e. death).  Yet I do not love him less for this.  Who can love him less for his eclipse when the sun itself cannot prevent its own eclipse? [Memorial, 3]

Disgrace, [n.]... 2.b.  A misfortune obs.  7.  Want of grace.  a. of person: ill-favouredness obs.

Oxford English Dictionary [Memorial, 3]

On the other hand, reading the text as written presents its own issue.  The use of the word “disdaineth” suggests an insensitivity from which the modern mind draws back offended.  While here it is chosen for its manifold play on words with the multiple meanings of the word “disgrace” from line 8, such wordplay itself feels cavalier. [Memorial, 4]

Sources:

Alden, Raymond Macdonald. The Sonnets of Shakespeare. From the Quarto of 1609

with variorum readings and commentary (1916).

Beeching, H. C. The Sonnets of Shakespeare (1904).

Lee, Sidney. Shakespeares Sonnets Being A Reproduction In Facsimile Of The First Edition 1609 (1905).

Malone, Edmund. The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare. Volume 10 (1790).

Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “Edward de Vere's Memorial For His Son, Who Died at Birth May 1583.” Virtual Grub Street, July 5, 2017. http://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2017/07/edward-de-veres-memorial-for-his-son_70.html

Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Source Texts: Anne, Countess of Oxford's, Poems on the Death of Her Infant Son (1584). https://gilbert-wesley-purdy.blogspot.com/2024/07/source-texts-anne-countess-of-oxfords.html Citing Soowthern, John. Pandora, the musyque of the beautie, of his mistresse Diana (1584).

Rendall, Gerald. H. Shakespeare Sonnets and Edward de Vere (No date).

Rollins, Hyder Edward. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Sonnets (1944).

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