SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived

With Sonnet 108, William Shakespeare loops back into sentiments expressed intermittently since Sonnet 76, but particularly again recently in Sonnet 105: I have essentially said it all, there is nothing I can do other than repeat and reiterate and rephrase the praises I have sung and continue to sing for you. What it also picks up from Sonnet 105 is the religious tone this set with a there still fairly oblique reference to the Holy Trinity. This was already amplified, though subtly, in Sonnet 106, and here finds a whole new level of what may potentially be perceived as impudence, if looked on from a devoutly religious perspective. What it also does – and this may in some respects for our observation be most directly relevant – is to tell his young lover yet again that he is showing signs of age, but that to him, Shakespeare, this doesn't matter.

Of all the poems in the collection first published in 1609, Sonnet 107 most clearly and most compellingly seems to refer to external events that shape Shakespeare's world. Because of this, it takes up a pivotal position in the canon, since it may therein hold clues to both its date of composition and to the person it is addressed to. And while there is little doubt in most people's mind that its references are indeed intentional and allude to some momentous occasion that has passed off signally better than anyone at the time would have predicted, and that in the ensuing calm and peace our poet feels that his love and his poetry have been given a new lease of life, no-one can tell with absolute certainty just what Shakespeare is actually referring to or whom he is talking to, or even whether the two factors are directly or only indirectly linked, or not at all. There are, however, significant clues, and so much of our discussion of this sonnet will concern itself with what these are and what they mean for our reading of this and the other sonnets in the series.

Sonnet 106 sees Shakespeare return to eulogising his young lover in outwardly straightforward terms. And rather than looking ahead to times to come when his poetry will continue to pay tribute to his love long after both he and his lover have gone, as several of the other sonnets have done, he here casts his eye back to the past through the lens of the poets who have talked about the people of their day, and comes to the conclusion that they were doing just as he is doing now: trying to express the epitome of beauty. But since this had not yet been reached, because the young man of his love had not yet been born, they ended up not so much chronicling their age as predicting an age to come with his appearance in this world; and yet of course now that he is here, it is possible for Shakespeare and anyone who shares the privilege of being in his presence to admire him, but Shakespeare and his contemporaries still find it impossible to do him justice with their words.

Sonnet 105 presents a playful paradox that is no doubt fully intended on William Shakespeare's part. Addressing, for a change, not his young lover directly, but speaking to the world in general about him and about his love for him, he tells us that we should not see, and in seeing so by implication judge, this love as the worship of a human and therefore by necessity false god, and then proceeds to deify this same object of his love in terms that – in a culture of immensely powerful religious strictures – comes scandalously close to sacrilege by effectively calling him 'the one and only' and investing him with qualities that prompt immediate comparisons to the holy Trinity.

With his celebrated and much-debated Sonnet 104, William Shakespeare appears to set out to do primarily three things: first and foremost, to reassure his young lover that even now, after some appreciable time has passed since they first met, he, the young lover, is still as beautiful to him, our poet, as he was on the very first day; in other words that for him, Shakespeare, the fact that his young lover may be showing signs not so much perhaps of age as of having grown up, doesn't matter. Secondly, to alert the reader and listener – most particularly the reader and listener of the future – to our mortality and to the passing of time and to the fading nature of youth and beauty, even if the changes inflicted by time are not perceptible in the moment. And thirdly – as it turns out for some people today still most controversially – to offer a time frame for the relationship with his young man of precisely and specifically three years. All of which, and particularly of course the latter, we will discuss in this episode.

Sonnet 103 is the fourth and last in this group of four sonnets with which William Shakespeare seeks to excuse himself for not writing more poetry to, for, or about his young lover lately. Like the first two in the group, Sonnets 100 & 101 – which are so closely linked that we may treat them as a pair – this sonnet also references the poet's Muse, but unlike these two it does not address itself to the Muse, but speaks about her, or rather the paucity of the output she facilitates the production of in view of the abundant wealth of qualities possessed by the the object of which she is supposed to help the poet speak, namely, the young man.

With Sonnet 102, William Shakespeare returns to addressing his young lover directly, though still in explanation and indeed defence of the extended period of silence of which Sonnets 100 & 101 spoke, both of which were addressed to his own Muse, admonishing her for her absence. In contrast to those two poems, Sonnet 102 takes full responsibility for the dearth of praises sung in sonnet form to the young man and sets out its reasoning in an argument that is so elaborate, it doesn't quite fit the form: Shakespeare never actually manages to finish his sentence that covers the entirety of the second and third quatrain, which gives the poem an almost improvised quality that may or may not be fully intended. 

Although at first glance Sonnet 101 can stand on its own, it so closely connects to Sonnet 100 that it really in all likelihood should be considered to form with it a pair within this group of four sonnets that they are both part of. Like Sonnet 100, it addresses itself to Shakespeare's Muse – his poetic inspiration – in a series of rhetorical questions that seek to encourage her to return to him to write further poetry for and about his young lover. In doing so, it purports to offer a possible explanation for the Muse's absence, but immediately rejects this as unsatisfactory, reminding the Muse of her duty to give the object of his love longevity way beyond his own presence on earth.

Sonnet 100 is the first in a group of four sonnets that speak of a hiatus in Shakespeare's poetry writing to his young lover. In the collection first published in 1609, this follows Sonnets 97 and 98, which both highlight an absence from the young man that has felt to Shakespeare like winter, with Sonnet 99 acting as something of a bridge between the two themes. Whether, therefore, the silence on Shakespeare's part coincides with this absence, we cannot say with certainty, but it would appear plausible to say the least...

In this special episode, Professor David Crystal OBE, one of the world's leading linguists with over 100 books to his name and a global reputation as a writer and lecturer on Early Modern English, talks to Sebastian Michael about Original Pronunciation (OP) – the way William Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have pronounced English at the time, and how this changes our understanding of Shakespeare's works generally, and specifically the sonnets.

In the collection of 154 sonnets by William Shakespeare published in 1609, Sonnet 99 is unique for two reasons that are possibly related: it is the only sonnet to consist of 15 lines instead of the usual 14, and it is the only sonnet that leans directly on a known source and can therefore be said to be a more or less direct reworking of an existing piece by another poet, rather than presenting a mere variation on a well-worn theme. The theme itself though is familiar from both classical and Renaissance poetry, but Shakespeare, as we would probably expect by now, manages to furnish his poem with one twist in particular that suggests he may be engaging in more than just a standard rhetorical exercise of imitatio.

When Sonnet 97 spoke of an absence from his lover that felt to Shakespeare "like a winter" even though it actually took place during the summer and/or autumn, Sonnet 98 speaks of either the same or a similar absence that took place during the springtime in April, which, however, on account of not having his lover around, to Shakespeare also seemed like "winter still."  With their many similarities and essentially identical themes, the two sonnets are clearly related, and it is unlikely to be a coincidence that they follow each other in the collection, although we cannot know whether our poet is here talking about a continuous absence from his lover that lasts all the way from late summer into the next spring, or whether he is talking about a renewed period of separation, or whether in fact the two sonnets have somehow got reversed in their order and we are looking at an absence that lasts from spring throughout the summer into the autumn. This latter scenario seems an unlikely one, as we discussed when looking at Sonnet 97, and so indeed do various other theories which see both these sonnets as merely emotional but not physical periods of separation, or as either referring to periods of separation from two different people, something we also saw and noted in the last episode.

Sonnet 97 ushers in a new phase in the relationship between William Shakespeare and his young lover, which, following the upheaval, anguish, doubt, and direct criticism of the young man contained in the group that immediately precedes it, comes across as a series of almost serene reflections first, once again, on a period of separation in this sonnet and the next one, and then, in Sonnets 100 to 103, on the challenge of finding the right words to speak of someone as roundly perfect as the young man, with the unusual Sonnet 99 acting as something of a bridge between the two themes that are henceforth being developed.

In this special episode, Abigail Rokison-Woodall, Deputy Director (Education) and Associate Professor in Shakespeare and Theatre at The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK, talks to Sebastian Michael about the challenges – and joys – of speaking verse in general and Shakespearean verse in particular: how do we do his language justice in a contemporary performance setting and how do we deal with the ways in which the English Renaissance approach to language differs from ours; with a focus also, of course, on the significance this has for reading and reciting the Sonnets.

With Sonnet 96 William Shakespeare concludes the extraordinary group of sonnets that deal with his young lover's infidelity. Easing off on the harsh criticism of the young man's behaviour voiced in Sonnet 95, he here brings in a new conciliatory tone which acknowledges that the young man's powers of attracting other people are great and that he could seduce any number of them, but ending on a plea not to do so for the sake of both, and reiterating, for the first time since Sonnet 36, the words 'I love thee', whereby, at first glance perplexingly, it is not only these three words that are repeated here, but the closing couplet in its entirety.

With his astoundingly forthright Sonnet 95, William Shakespeare admonishes his young lover in the most uncompromising terms yet, and he rounds off his salvo with another stern warning that even someone as privileged and exalted as he can go too far. It forms the culmination of a progression in tone and stance that has been underway since Sonnet 87, from almost mourning the loss of his lover, to pleading for the end, if it is to come, to come soon, to reminding the young man of their union and an apparently declared devotion to each other, to effectively claiming his entitlement to the young man's fidelity, to this: a direct condemnation of his character and conduct.

With Sonnet 94, William Shakespeare takes a step back from his discourse in poetry, addressed directly to his young lover, and reflects more broadly and apparently abstractly on a quality of mercy that ought not to be strained.The sonnet makes two at first glance almost separate observations, devoting the first eight lines – the octave – to an ethical question of how to handle privilege and power, and the following six lines – the sestet – to a metaphor of the tarnished ideal. The two are, of course, not only directly related to each other to form a compelling argument about personal conduct and integrity, but they are also firmly embedded in the group of sonnets which in the Quarto Edition follows the Rival Poet sequence: everything from Sonnet 87 to and including Sonnet 96 hangs together as a coherent string of thoughts, fears, hopes, and concerns over a relationship that is teetering on the brink of collapse, and although Sonnet 94 might in theory also be considered in isolation, it in reality only makes proper sense when read as part of this group, in which it provides something of a linchpin for the astonishing turnaround in tone and stance that is set up by Sonnet 93 and comes into full force in Sonnet 95.

Sonnet 93 is the third of three sonnets that pivot William Shakespeare's stance towards his young lover from one of pure praise and adulation to one that not just questions his conduct and character, but begins to actively admonish him. It picks up directly from the closing couplet of Sonnet 92 and imagines a situation in which the young man is unfaithful to Shakespeare without Shakespeare knowing about this, and so it compares our poet to a 'deceived husband'. In doing so it reinforces the claim made by Sonnet 92, that the young man is in effect pledged to Shakespeare for life, and it further likens their relationship to a marriage. And while this can't, of course, be read literally – not least because equal marriage did not exist at the time and Shakespeare was already married with children to Anne in Stratford – it nevertheless gives us a deep insight into how William Shakespeare views himself constellated to his young lover.

Sonnet 92 continues from Sonnet 91 and sets out a compelling – if perhaps strictly speaking somewhat sophistic – argument why the young man may, as the previous sonnet in its closing couplet considered to be a distinct possibility, leave Shakespeare whenever he feels like it, but without in doing so actually making him, Shakespeare, most wretched as a result, as the same sonnet also suggested would be the case. This sonnet thus appears to contradict the consequence to the poet of a breakup put forward by Sonnet 91, but the ostensible options it offers for his happiness are stark: I can be happy because you love me or because I am dead. Like Sonnet 91, though, this poem too weaves the thread of thought further and leads into Sonnet 93 as the third part of the argumentation and in doing so it ushers in a rather radical change in tone which will become increasingly pronounced in the two poems that then follow, Sonnets 94 and 95. 

With Sonnet 91, William Shakespeare reclaims his place in the young man's favour, and for the first time in a while – in the published sequence since the group that contains Sonnets 71 to 76 – speaks primarily of how the young man's love privileges him, Shakespeare, above all else. It is for the most part a return to a happier, more confident, more celebratory tone, which, however, tellingly is then tempered with a closing couplet that once again conjures up the spectre of this love being taken away entirely at the young man's whim.