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Sunday, December 22, 2024

The Sonnets of Shakespeare: Sonnet 134.

 



134

SO now I have confest that he is thine,

And I my selfe am morgag’d to thy will,

My selfe lie forfeit, so that other mine,                 3

Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still:

But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,

For thou art covetous, and he is kinde,                  6

He learnd but suretie-like to write for me,

Under that bond that him as fast doth binde.

The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,             9

Thou usurer that put’st forth all to use,

And sue a friend, came debter for my sake,

So him I loose through my unkinde abuse.             12

Him have I lost, thou hast both him and me,

He paies the whole, and yet am I not free.



2. will] Lee (Fortnightly, 1898, LXIX, 220) explains as mortgaged “to her personality in which ‘will,’ in the double sense of stubbornness and sensual passion is the strongest element.”—Will can mean “carnal desire or appetite,” according to N. E. D. (1926), which gives only two modern examples, both from Sh. It could also mean here “intention,” “purpose.”

3. other mine] Dowden (1881) That other mine, that other myself, my alter ego.—Stopes (1901) "That other mine," my friend, who is myself.—Beeching (1904): That other who is mine.—Pooler (ed. 1918): That other myself. [He compares 133.6.]—Tucker (1924) says that it “cannot” have this last meaning. He oddly substitutes, “That remainder of what is mine.”

7, 8.] Tucker (1924): He had not been taught the full meaning of the document which he was endorsing.

7-14.] L. J. Mills (One Soul, 1937, p. 241): The suggestion is that the friend had gone to woo the lady for the poet and, according to friendship convention (as in [Greene’s] Tullies Loue [Ciceronis Amor, 1589]), the lady fell in love with the messenger.

11, 14.] Stopes (1881): Cp. the position of Antonio in the Merchant of Venice.


9.] Malone (1780): Statute has here its legal signification, that of a security or obligation for money.—Verity (1890): You will put the statute into execution and claim the letter of your bond, like a very Shylock.

10. use] Malone (1790): Usance.—Schmidt (1875): Interest paid for borrowed money.

11. came] became

12.] my unkinde abuse] Pooler (1918): The unkind abuse or ill-treatment which I have received from you; “my ” = inflicted on me.—Tucker (1924): Viz. in allowing him to become surety.

14.] Pooler (1918): As surety he is liable for my debt, but we should not both have to pay.



Commentary:



Von Mauntz [thinks that this sonnet is addressed by a woman to her rival, and that in lines 7-8 she speaks of her marriage contract. (Jahrb., 28: 274)]


Lee (1907): The legal terminology in . . . [134, as in 87] closely resembles that employed by Barnes in his Parthenophil [1593], Sonnets viii, ix, and xi, where “mortgage,” “bail,” “forfeit,” “forfeiture,” “deed of gift” are all applied to the mistress’ hold on the lover’s heart.


Tucker (1924): [134 has] a humorous vein of double meaning. The woman has compelled both men to render carnal service to her beauty. She insists upon having in that relation the friend as well as the poet, whose service does not satisfy her claim. He playfully pleads that his friend has merely acted for him (cf. 40.5-6), and that he is quite willing to take the whole burden upon himself, if she will give up the friend. But neither she nor the friend is so inclined.


Tyler (1890): If 134 is to be taken as resting on a basis of fact, it would seem that it was on some business of Shakespeare's that Herbert first went to the lady. Possibly he went to see Mrs. Fitton as a friend of Shakespeare.


Archer (1897): So much for the Dedication ; let us now turn to the sonnet-group 134 to 136. The first lines of 134 are these :—

" So now I have confessed that he is thine,

And I myself am mortgaged to thy will."

Given Shakespeare's inveterate habit of quibbling upon words, this alone would suggest that the Young Man's name was Will, the implication being that the poet is bound in a double servitude to his mistress's will, and to her Will, his friend. This, however, would be no more than a conjecture, were it not that the poet himself points our attention to the quibble in the very next sonnet, in which he dwells upon it from first to last, emphasizing it with capitals and italics.

*

However in comprehensible may be the comfort Shakespeare professed to find in the fact, sonnets 134, 135, and 136 make it as clear as daylight that the name of the friend who " robbed " him of his mistress was the same as his own.


Was Shakespeare Gay? What Do the Sonnets Really Say?

Bennett (2007): Now that he has admitted that his friend is bound to the mistress too, he wants to make a bargain for his friend’s freedom. He will forfeit himself if she will restore “that other mine” (the friend) to him as a “comfort” (ll. 3-4). In other words, the speaker needs to make his soul whole again.


GWP: Sonnet 134 is equal in importance to any in the Oxfordian text. It's relationship to the sonnets immediately before and after show it one of a number on Vere and his "friend," Shakespeare, being thralls to the beauty of Elizabeth Trentham. The reader may recall Sonnet 42, also on the theme:

But here’s the ioy, my friend and I are one,...

Shot through with double-entendre, the theme and its resolution are so clever that Vere treated his wife and other readers to it numerous times. On this occasion, the ironic meaning of the ending of 42 (which is a riddle, actually) is reinforced by line 7:

He learnd but suretie-like to write for me,...

Again, a very clever description of a pen-name. Vere's friend is the personification of his pen-name.

There is much more happening here if we include the commentary. All of it is by traditional scholars unaffected by the Authorship Question. Read over, however, that commentary agrees resoundingly that Shakespeare's friend is somehow his alter ego — is also himself.

Beyond the commentary, the reader may notice that Elizabeth has taken a role similar to Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. The legal references in that play are not to Venetian law but to the Common Law Vere was taught at Gray's Inn. The application of contract Common Law to lovers' promises is far-and-away the signature legal image found throughout the works of Shakespeare.

It is also the image by which I identify the sonnet I present in my Discovered: A New Shakespeare Sonnet (or three, actually)(2015).1



Sources:


Alden, Raymond Macdonald. The Sonnets of Shakespeare (1916).

Archer, William. “Shakespeare's Sonnets. The Case Against Southampton.” The Fortnightly

Review. Vol. 62. (1897). 817-834.

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

Bennett, Keneth C. Threading Shakespeare’s Sonnets (2007)

Dowden, Ernst. The Sonnets of Shakespeare (1881).

Lee, Sidney. Complete Works of William Shakespeare (1907)

Malone, Edmund. Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators (etc.) (1821).

Mills, L. J. One Soul in Bodies Twain. (1937).

Pooler, C. Knox. The Works of Shakespeare: Sonnets (1918).

Rendall, Gerald. Shakespeare Sonnets and Edward de Vere (1930).

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

Stopes, Charlotte Carmichael. Shakespeare's Sonnets (1901).

Tucker, T. G. The Sonnets of Shakespeare (1924).

Tyler, Thomas. Shakespeare's Sonnets (1890).

Verity, A. W. Works of W. Sh. Edited by Henry Irving and Frank A. Marshall. Sonnets in volume 8. Introduction and notes by A. W. Verity. (1890).

Von Mauntz, Alfred. “Sh.'s Lyrische Gedichte,” Jahrbuch, 28: 274. (1893)




1 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Discovered: A New Shakespeare Sonnet (or three, actually)(2015). https://www.amazon.com/Discovered-Shakespeare-Sonnet-three-actually/dp/1514750406/



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