[lit-ideas] Re: APRIL POEMS (6th): Sonnet 71
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 13:31:30 -0700
Sonnet LXXI
No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse.
But let your love even with my life decay,
Lest the wise world should look into your moan
And mock you with me after I am gone.
I admire Richard’s ingenious deconstruction of Sonnet LXXI, It is
provocative enough to deserve at least the tentative and speculative
response I offer here.
Richard says that this sonnet ‘unfortunately exposes [Shakespeare] as
something of a hack, [although the best hack] ever.’ I must note though
that the attribution ‘hack’ is Richard’s, and not something Shakespeare
(or the speaker) here says of himself; thus the attribution is external
to the poem and is not derived from it (as might be the word
‘attask'd’). This, one might think, suggests that an exploration of
further associations with the word ‘hack’ (and ‘hackney’) tells us
little about the text or about Shakespeare’s intentions in this case.
Richard says further that ‘the self-effacement of the lover before the
beloved reaches its extreme, which extreme can be partially explained
when one notes that the Shakespearean definition of "hackney" was
prostitute.’
Is this so? There is only one occurrence of ‘hackney’ in Shakespeare’s
works. It occurs in Act 3, Scene 1, of Love’s Labour's Lost:
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO How hast thou purchased this experience?
MOTH By my penny of observation.
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO But O,--but O,--
MOTH 'The hobby-horse is forgot.'
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO Callest thou my love 'hobby-horse'?
MOTH No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your
love perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love?
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO Almost I had.
MOTH Negligent student! learn her by heart.
Moth’s use of ‘hackney’ gives it a double sense; but that he means to
taunt Don Adriano here isn’t obvious. This may be mere Shakespearean
wordplay at which the audience might snicker in passing, nothing more.
Richard suggests that somehow, because of ‘Shakespeare and poems like
this’ the word ‘hack…gradually came to be attached to someone who hires
out his…services for pay, especially in literary work, a drudge.’ But
the word ‘hack’ occurs in Shakespeare’s writings just six times, and
each time it is a verb, meaning to cut.
Richard says that Sonnets LXXI, ‘…fairly pivots around "forgot," …’ and
proceeds to give an artful analysis of remembering and forgetting (and
their relationship to the unworthiness of the author/speaker) in LXXI,
and the two succeeding sonnets. It is an analysis to make one think, and
we owe Richard much thanks.
Yet suddenly the word ‘forgetive,’ is introduced as if (?) ‘forgetting’
and ‘forgetive’ were somehow related except orthographically. They are
not. ‘To forget’ was ultimately, ‘to lose one’s grip on’; it was, as
Richard knows, related early on to ‘vergessen.’ ‘Forgetive’ (and the ‘g’
is soft) is a Shakespearean word entirely. It does come, as Richard
notes, from Falstaff’s speech in Henry IV, Pt. II, and means, roughly,
the ability to ‘mentally forge,’ in the sense of being nimble, and
quick-witted (as, in this case from drinking sack). The stem is ‘forge,’
not the ‘for’ of ‘forget.’ So I am puzzled that attention is paid to it
here.
I thank Richard for eliciting some thoughts in this tired brain.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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