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did not log it, so I don't have exact quotes, but it started out:
"Hi there! I found you through the member directory, and I was wondering..."
"What do you think was Shakespeare's take on the relationship between love and self-deceit?"
Well! thought I, that's certainly more interesting than the usual "a/s/l?"
First, I asked whether this was a homework assignment (didn't want to ghostwrite for a lazy highschooler), and the person (still not sure of the persons gender) said no, that s/he had to lead a class discussion and wanted other opinions besides his/her own, and the class in question was not into talking.
The sonnets that were to be the focus of the discussion were:
#130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.
and #138
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed:
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O! love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love, loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
Well, little did this person know that once I start speculating on a new idea, particularly one about Shakespeare, I get a good head of steam going... let me just say it wasn't me who said "excuse me, but I have to go now." ;-)
My short answer to the question about self-deceit is that the poems are written with too ironical a tone for the character of the narrator* to be truly the victim of self-deceit...especially in the second of the two poems. He knows she's lying, and she knows he knows she's lying, and he knows she knows. (yes, that's my short answer
In both these poems I get the sense that love is powerful enough to see beyond flaws -- flaws in physical beauty and flaws in character, and that when he wrote:
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
It's more to protect each other's feelings than to really deceive each other, in an attempt to keep the love itself alive between them (I said to this person that I think he fears the death of his love than his own mortality).
*(the more I read the sonnets as a complete set, the more convinced I am that they are not strictly autobiographical, or a form of poetic diary of an illicit love affair. There's too much damned foreshadowing, and the recurrent use of 3 or 4 metaphors -- the ideas in one poem flow too smoothly from one to the next. Even though the narrator refers to himself as Will, I think it's really a fictional, allagorical character, and that he wrote the sonnets as a set in order to tell a story, and to make some philosophical point about the nature of love, human mortality and Time. ... Which could be, even after som 500 years of scholarly research, no one can figure out who this "Dark Mistress" really is).
"Hi there! I found you through the member directory, and I was wondering..."
"What do you think was Shakespeare's take on the relationship between love and self-deceit?"
Well! thought I, that's certainly more interesting than the usual "a/s/l?"
First, I asked whether this was a homework assignment (didn't want to ghostwrite for a lazy highschooler), and the person (still not sure of the persons gender) said no, that s/he had to lead a class discussion and wanted other opinions besides his/her own, and the class in question was not into talking.
The sonnets that were to be the focus of the discussion were:
#130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.
and #138
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed:
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O! love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love, loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
Well, little did this person know that once I start speculating on a new idea, particularly one about Shakespeare, I get a good head of steam going... let me just say it wasn't me who said "excuse me, but I have to go now." ;-)
My short answer to the question about self-deceit is that the poems are written with too ironical a tone for the character of the narrator* to be truly the victim of self-deceit...especially in the second of the two poems. He knows she's lying, and she knows he knows she's lying, and he knows she knows. (yes, that's my short answer
In both these poems I get the sense that love is powerful enough to see beyond flaws -- flaws in physical beauty and flaws in character, and that when he wrote:
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
It's more to protect each other's feelings than to really deceive each other, in an attempt to keep the love itself alive between them (I said to this person that I think he fears the death of his love than his own mortality).
*(the more I read the sonnets as a complete set, the more convinced I am that they are not strictly autobiographical, or a form of poetic diary of an illicit love affair. There's too much damned foreshadowing, and the recurrent use of 3 or 4 metaphors -- the ideas in one poem flow too smoothly from one to the next. Even though the narrator refers to himself as Will, I think it's really a fictional, allagorical character, and that he wrote the sonnets as a set in order to tell a story, and to make some philosophical point about the nature of love, human mortality and Time. ... Which could be, even after som 500 years of scholarly research, no one can figure out who this "Dark Mistress" really is).
