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

In this special episode, Phyllis Rackin, Professor Emerita of English from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and former president of the Shakespeare Association of America talks to Sebastian Michael about the position of women in Elizabethan society, about William Shakespeare's relationship with the women in his life, and about what we can and cannot know specifically of the Dark Lady in his Sonnets.

With his tormented, paradoxical, and sensationally revealing Sonnet 35, William Shakespeare absolves the young man of his misdeed and puts what has happened down to nothing in the world being perfect, not even he. It is the third in this set of three sonnets that might be considered a triptych, and with it, Shakespeare appears to resign himself into the triangular complexity his relationship with the young man has acquired, while dropping a nugget of information that to us comes as something of a poetic bombshell.

With Sonnet 33 a new phase begins in the relationship between William Shakespeare and the young man. The storm clouds that gather in this poem are a direct and intentional metaphor for the turbulence the two face, as the young man has clearly gone and done something to upset his loving poet. What exactly this is, the sonnet doesn't tell us, but it is obvious that Shakespeare is hurt and disappointed, whilst trying to rationalise the young man's behaviour in a way that makes some sort of sense to him.

With the astonishingly bold, borderline brazen Sonnet 31, William Shakespeare strikes a completely new tone and tells both his young lover and us things he has not revealed before. It comes as close as we have seen thus far to declaring a physical component to their relationship, and in doing so opens an entirely new chapter with a whole different dynamic.

One of the most celebrated poems in the canon, Sonnet 29 casts William Shakespeare in a state of deep and lonely unhappiness, from which the memory of his young lover is able to lift him in spectacular fashion. By continuing the theme of weariness and dejection established by the previous two sonnets, it confirms our notion of Shakespeare being on the road, away from the young man, but rather than focusing on a longing desire to be with him, it rejoices in the love experienced before.

Sonnet 27 is the first of several sonnets in which Shakespeare laments the fact that he is away from his young lover, thus answering the question posed indirectly by Sonnet 26 as to who is on the move. And while this sonnet can stand on its own, with a fully formed and perfectly concluded argument, it does come as a pair with Sonnet 28, which follows on directly from it and which, by contrast, relies on this sonnet to be properly introduced. The two should therefore be looked at together, and we will do so when we get to Sonnet 28.

The at once defiant and celebratory Sonnet 25 is the first in the series to tell us something about William Shakespeare's own situation in life, and it also makes an astonishingly bold claim on the young man, newly asserting not only that the two of them belong together, but that they are inseparable.

The simultaneously self-conscious and also cautiously confident Sonnet 23 counsels the young man in the art of love, and in doing so it becomes the first one in the series to signal an uncertainty on William Shakespeare's part about the level to which the young man's love for him matches his own, in both degree and sophistication. And it is also the first sonnet to tell us that while Shakespeare still fully believes in the power of his written words, he has a tendency to become tongue-tied when in the presence of his young lover.

The distinctive and sincere Sonnet 21 stands out as the first in the series in which William Shakespeare addresses an unspecified general 'audience' to talk about his love – as opposed to the young man directly, or a personified concept, such as time – and it is also the first one to reference the poetry of somebody else ,or of other people. It therefore marks an especially significant stage in the development of the relationship and a notable new stance with which Shakespeare positions himself towards his love and the outside world.

​The heartfelt, somewhat self-conscious, but defiant and confident Sonnet 19 underlines the bold assertion I, the poet, William Shakespeare, made in Sonnet 18: that it is my poetry itself that gives life to the young man who receives these sonnets, and thus preserves his youth forever.

The Procreation Sonnets are something of a conundrum: they are entirely clear in their intention, in their message, and in their poetic purpose, they stand at the beginning of the originally published sequence, and yet at first glance they seem to fit nowhere properly. And more than anything else – and more than many if not most of the other sonnets that we have of William Shakespeare’s – they raise the basic question: why? Why does William Shakespeare at some point in his life take time out of what cannot have been anything other than a busy schedule to tell a young man to produce an heir? What concern is the young man of his? And who is the young man? In this Special Edition of SONNETCAST, Sebastian Michael, author of The Sonneteer, summarises what the Procreation Sonnets tell us so far about William Shakespeare and the recipient of the first 17 Sonnets...

The riveting and really rather irony-infused Sonnet 16 directly follows on from Sonnet 15 and completes the argument set up and semi-resolved there. And while Sonnet 15 can just about stand on its own – with, as we have seen, quite thrilling significance for how it then can be read – Sonnet 16 absolutely needs to be read with Sonnet 15 for it to make sense.

The at first glance curiously anticlimactic Sonnet 14 seems to take us a step back in any real or supposed trajectory that the sonnets so far have described, but it nevertheless offers an intriguing insight into the constellation between the poet and the young man, and may in fact hide more than meets the eye.