Shakespeare's Sonnet 66:

[capri0mni]

Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

---

You know, as of today (17 January, 2017), the top three (American) Google auto-complete results for “Shakespeare Sonnet” are:

• 116
(Let me not to the marriage of true minds),

• 18
(Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?) and

• 130
(My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun).

I predict this one will rise in the rankings over the next four years.

Comments

[alatefeline]

Yeah.

[capri0mni]

Now, this poem has been a favorite of mine ever since I first encountered it, as a freshman in college. The wordplay and word pairs in each line are delicious.

So this is often a sonnet I'll look for, for individual readings on YouTube. When I first started searching I was struck that the videos made of it were most often from Russian and German accounts.

Not surprising. But it does make a point, and I think the vloggers who make their own "fanvids" of this poem, even though English is their second (or third, or fourth) language, have a better sense of the poem's meaning than the "official" study guides I've seen from American publishers.

[alatefeline]

...Huh. Thanks for the context.

[kellan_the_tabby]

Yeah I'm seein that. What with one thing & another.

[capri0mni]

...And another ... and another.

*sigh*

I actually woke up yesterday with the sentiment of that closing couplet in my head. I really don't want to live to see the end of the world (32 years ago, when Reagan was reelected, I thought the end would come from global nuclear war -- turned out to be AIDS, instead -- and now, it's global warming).

But if I check out now, there would be one less person to support my friends, who're doing their best to fight back. And that matters.

[alatefeline]

Yeah, it does.

I'm trying to maintain the two ideas in my head of, one, recognizing and not trying to deny that things are bleak as hell, and, two, behaving as if there is hope because nothing else makes sense; and I'm struggling with that, but I have good role models.

It's good to remember that friends and loved ones want us here.

I am grateful to you for sharing the poem.

[capri0mni]

And I'm grateful that you're here to share it with. :-)

[alatefeline]

:D

[kellan_the_tabby]

Yeah pretty much that, exactly.

Hey, if you'll pick me up when it's awful & I need it, I'll pick you up when it's awful & you need it, mmkay?

[capri0mni]

Definitely!

In this world, surviving is an act of radical rebellion.

[kellan_the_tabby]

YES exactly. Let's do that; also it'll piss off the right people.

[capri0mni]

It's a deal.

[raze]

x_x Oof. Yes.

[capri0mni]

One of the things that people forget (or never learned, or choose not to know), because they tend to romanticize Elizabethan England, because of the "Teh Shiny!!" is that the government had more in common with Soviet Russia than England, today. Government spies were everywhere, and they kept records on everything. And every play he wrote had to be line-item checked by a government censor.

There's a reason Shakespeare set all his social/political commentary plays in either far-away "exotic" places, or long, long ago. or both.

[kellan_the_tabby]

...things I did not know! Thank you!

[capri0mni]

You're welcome!

(And that's the second big reason I hate the Shakespeare identity conspiracies -- the first one being loathsome snobbery -- is that in such a society any big secrets would collapse along with the system that kept them).

[jesse_the_k]

There you go again, providing vital context.

(I'm so glad you're here to do it.)

[capri0mni]

I'm so glad you appreciate it!

[redsixwing]

Oof. (But yes. I remember running across this one during some sort of a Shakespeare study and being v surprised, because we were all about 18 and 130.)

It's a beautiful piece of writing, and the parallelism in each line just sings.

[capri0mni]

It's a beautiful piece of writing, and the parallelism in each line just sings.

Indeed.

"art made tongue-tied by authority." is a punch in my solar plexis, every time.

[redsixwing]

Yeah.

"And captive good attending captain ill" gets me, too.

[capri0mni]

My mother had an "oh, wow!" reaction when she first read that one.