In this video I'd like to give a quick explanation of Shakespeare's sonnet 115,
and my primary purpose in doing this is not only because the sonnet is
interesting, but because it really is a pair with sonnet 116. That one is
frequently studied, but people tend to ignore that these sonnets go together,
and I think it's really fascinating to read them in tandem with each other. Now
before we jump into this I do want to point out that in the original text
(which you can find online and I'll show you how to do that at the end of this
video) ... in the original text some of the punctuation is different [and] some of the
spelling is different. Most of the time this doesn't really matter but in
this poem there are two places where I do think it is critical to know what the
original looked like, So if we look for instance at line 8 of the sonnet, you
will notice that I have added an "s" in square brackets here. In the original we
do not have this "s." So that's the 1609 quarto edition, and editors sometimes
supply the "s" to try to make sense of the grammar. We'll come back to that in a
little bit. Perhaps more important is the very end of the poem, and a lot of
editors tend to add a question mark at the end. So perhaps we should add a
question mark at the very end of this poem, but I have left it as is as a
period because it's a bit ambiguous whether it's a question or not. And that
definitely changes the way we read this. As you can see from the right side of
the screen here, I've picked out a few images that I think go with this poem.
The four dominant images in the poem are the flame in the first quatrain (a
quatrain is four lines of poetry in a sonnet),
the image of time (time that ticks away and that changes things), then
we have the image of ruling of a king with a crown (and time is compared to
a tyrant in this case) and, finally, I know it's not a great picture but we have
the image of a babe, an infant. That's the final kind
of metaphor that's being used in this sonnet. Well, let's go through this now and
see if we can make some sense of the specific lines. Sonnet 115 starts
with "Those lines that I before have writ do lie." By "lines" here
Shakespeare means those poems -- specifically all of the sonnets up to
now. They're all a bunch of lies. And this comes as a surprise, so let's figure out
why he says this: "Even those that said I could not love you dearer, / Yet then
[back then] my judgment [my intellect, my reason] knew no reason why, / My most
full flame should afterwards burn clearer." If we think about the idea of a
flame here we can really talk about it in in two ways. We can talk about it in
terms of intensity (How bright is the flame? How intense is it? How hot is it?)
and then we can also think of it in terms of size. And the lines seem to
suggest almost that these two things are easily confused or misunderstood. So if
we think about a full flame, for instance, a full flame seems to refer more to size
than to intensity. But if we think about "clearer," perhaps that refers more to
intensity. How brightly is the flame burning? Is there smoke? Can
you see through it? That's the clarity, the intensity of
the flame. And what he's really saying here then is that in the past he's
written lots of sonnets and he kept saying "I love you, I love you, I love
you, I can't love you any more than this!" but now he says, "Well, wait a second, maybe
I could love you more, or the intensity could change, so perhaps all of
those sonnets, those expressions of love, were really a bunch of lies." Okay, so
let's go to the next four lines then, the next quatrain, and here he talks about
time. Now these four lines are very tricky and part of the
problem is that we have all these verbs here.
We have "creep," "change, "tan," "blunt," and "divert." But what is doing the action of
these verbs? Is it "time" or is it "accidents"? Let's see if we can figure
this out here. Accidents are events and these are the
things that happen over time. The word "accident" literally means something that
befalls, something that happens. The word "millioned" means "numerous." So we have
numerous events over time, and "reckoning" means "counting," "judging" -- that sense
of time. Well, in the first bit we have "creep in 'twixt' vows and change decrees of
kings," and most people agree that this definitely refers to these accidents. So
over time there are lots of events that creep in "twixt" (that means "betwixt" -- the
first bit is gone here -- [which means] "between") ... so between vows. And imagine that for
instance you make a vow to somebody. You say "I'm gonna love you forever and ever,"
and then, you know, the other person gets sick. That's an event that
happens. That's an accident. And then you say, if you're a mean person ... you say "I
don't think I'm gonna keep loving you. It's just too much work." Well in that case
(heaven forbid it happens) you would say the accidents, the events, have
crept in between the vows. And the same thing can happen to the laws or
decrees of kings. The king it makes a law, circumstances change, and the king says
well maybe we need to fix the law. We need to adapt it to new times. So
this part here, we could say then that "whose millioned
accidents creep in 'twixt vows and change decrees of kings" -- we could say that this
bit just ends here and that maybe the next verbs go back to "time." But there is
a problem with this, because as you can see here "accidents" is plural, "time" is
singular. Time is singular, but the verb doesn't match up. It should be
"time tans sacred beauty" or "blunts" or "diverts." And
that is why so many editors are tempted to put this "s" here,
because what we could say then is that all of this all the way to the end here
refers to "accidents" and then this goes back to "time." I do think that makes a
kind of sense but you should be aware that we don't have that in the original,
and it is possible that already with "Tan" we are going back to time and that
Shakespeare has simply used the ... plural form of the verb here
("tan" instead of "tans") in order to match it with time, which seems a
little bit odd to us. Okay, so hopefully that's not too confusing, but what I
would suggest is you do follow this insertion of the "s," put the brackets
here, and I think it does make a certain amount of sense. What we're saying then
is that all of these events come in: they tan sacred beauty, they blunt the
sharpest intentions ... you have great intentions but they become dull over
time, you gain a tan and your white beauty is gone ... and as a
result of all of these things time "Diverts the strongest minds [even] to the
course of altering things." By "course" here we mean [something] like the course of a river. If
a river is changing course, if it's going in different directions, then it's not
going straight, like time, but it's dealing with alteration. It's dealing
with change. As things alter, the course changes, and so perhaps time also diverts
(like you do with a river or with a dam -- you divert a stream) ... you divert strong
minds from their original intentions as they adapt to altering things. So the
mind becomes more like a wandering stream rather than a straight line. Alright,
now that's a lot of explanation of the second quatrain. Let's see if we can
make sense of the third section here now. So here the poet
says "Alas," which means "oh no" or "it's too bad" really. So "Alas why, fearing of time's
tyranny, / Might I not then say now I love you best / When I was certain o'er in-
certainty, / Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?" If we think of time as
personified, and some editors capitalize time as a result ... so if time is
personified and is like a king then time is constantly in charge. Time is making
us change our best intentions, as we've just seen, so the the king time comes by
and says, "Nope, you cannot love this person any more.
We want you to love somebody else." That kind of thing. So if you're afraid of
what time might do then perhaps you might say in the moment "now I love you best."
You say to your beloved, "Well, I have no idea what the future
is going to bring. I'm afraid of time and I still love you. I love you best right
now and that's the best that I can say." So at the end here then he says we
crown the present. So we think of this as the present or the "now moment," and we
don't know what the future is going to bring. All of this is uncertain. Then
we're just going to focus on this moment. We're going to crown the present, and that
way we can take the crown away from Time (the tyrant Time) and we give it to
somebody else. So there's a reference here to deposing the king,
which seems quite rebellious in this circumstance. This line here is a little
tricky where he refers to being "certain o'er in-certainty." If you think of "o'er"
or "over" as ... well, it could be literally "over" -- if you think of being certain
about the now moment over the uncertainty, the uncertainty of time, you
could read this literally. But I think it's better to think of it loosely as
something like "in relation to" uncertainty. So I was certain in
relation to uncertainty, which can then be interpreted in different ways. You
could say, well, I was certain "despite" uncertainty or I was certain "about"
uncertainty. There's definitely different ways to read this particular word. If you
read it as being "about" uncertainty then you would say "I'm completely
certain that life is uncertain (if that makes any sense), and so the best I can do
given this uncertainty that I'm certain about is to crown the present and just
to live in the here and now." If you read it more loosely to kind of say "I'm
certain in relation to uncertainty" or "despite uncertainty" then you're kind of
ignoring the uncertainty and you're just focusing on being certain for the time
present. As you can see this is a very difficult poem which has given people
lots of trouble, but it is interesting! And so if we try to summarize this
quatrain now, we could say that he's saying "Alas, if I'm afraid of what time
can do then maybe the best response is to say at the moment I love you the best.
this is the brightest my flame can burn. And maybe that was okay back in the day
when I was certain in relation to uncertainty ... that I doubted
the rest of time ... what might happen in the future, and I simply
focused on the the time present and i crowned that particular moment.
Maybe that was a good response." Now before we look at the last
couplet here, the rhyming couplet at the end, we should think back to the
beginning for a moment. Because at the very beginning he said, "Those lines that
I before have writ do lie," and that seemed very certain,
which is ironic given this language of certainty. But if we now look
at this quatrain it's almost like he's actually changed his mind. He's going
back and he's saying, well, maybe they were lies, but that's the best I could do.
I didn't know what the future was going to bring and so maybe it wasn't so bad.
Maybe it wasn't a terrible lie. What's remarkable about this sonnet is
that this sonnet actually seems to change. It
changes course. It starts out with quite a strong claim and then it
seems to undercut that claim over time, which is actually very appropriate in
terms of what the sonnet is about. So let's go to the last two lines now and I
would say these are actually the most difficult lines of the sonnet if you can
believe it! So here the poet says "Love is a babe," so
love is an infant. Love is going to grow up over time. When you fall in love
with somebody it's not a perfect relationship right away. You have to work
out the kinks. It's going to take quite a bit of time, and the intensity of your
love will change. "Love is a babe, then might I not say so, / To give full growth to
that which still does grow." Is this a question or is it a statement? Let's
look at both of these options. If you say that this is a statement (there's
no question mark here), then you might interpret this as really being focused
on the [word] "not." So you would say, if you think back to this "might I not then say"
you would say "Then as a result (this is like therefore -- I'll give you the
symbol here) ... therefore I might not say so." I should
never have said "I love you best." It was a total mistake. I couldn't have said that
because love is growing and so the conclusion here is "Then I might not have
said that. I shouldn't have said that if I wanted to give full growth to that
which still doth grow." If my flame is going to burn more brightly, I really
shouldn't be saying this kind of stuff. I love you the best right now because I
need to give full growth to that which still is growing. Okay, seems to make a
kind of sense, but a lot of readers are not entirely satisfied with this. Why
would he first kind of go back in time and and justify himself and then change
his mind again? That seems very odd. So it's hard to know quite what to make of
this. So perhaps it is better to think of it as a question and if you read it as a
question then the question goes something like this:
Since love is an infant and is growing, then might I not have said
in the past (think of this as really saying this in the past, although you
could even say it today) now I love you best, because at the time I was giving
full growth (that is as fully grown as it was at the time) but the infant is
still growing as well. So if we think about stages along the way then we can
say each stage along the way is as fully grown as we can imagine it up to that
point. And then the next stage is as fully grown, and so on. That's another
way to read this -- to kind of say, well, I want to admit that this is as great
as it is at the moment, even though it's possible that this is still growing as
well. So perhaps this is more of a question then? Maybe we're saying, well,
maybe we should say this when we're in the moment, because that's
really the best we can do. As you can probably hear, this is even difficult for
me to explain, because there's so much ambiguity to these lines. It's not
an easy sonnet, and we shouldn't simplify it too much. I can certainly imagine that
you can come up with other readings of these last two lines that make equal
sense as well. So really don't be shy about that. But hopefully at the very
least you've seen that this is an interesting sonnet with some fascinating
metaphors, that when we look at the original we see that the punctuation, the
the grammar, sometimes is different, which presents certain interesting problems,
and as you go on to sonnet 116 you'll be able to compare the two and really learn
a lot in terms of how Shakespeare often writes these pairs of poems in order to
give us different perspectives on the same issue. As I mentioned before you can
find all of Shakespeare's sonnets online and you might want to check this out. If
you go to the British Library you can find a digitized copy of the
first quarto edition from 1609, and it really is quite interesting to see what
the text look like at that point. So you can see we have sonnet 115 here and as
we talked about, there's no "s" after "divert." If we go to the next page you
can see also there's no question at the end. Notice as well that sonnet 116 is
misprinted as 119 by accident ,which is kind of humorous! And I'll let you
check out the rest of this manuscript yourself, but it is really cool to be
able to travel back in time like this without necessarily setting foot in the
British Library.