We close this semester with Shakespeare’s love poems, first by reading
Sonnet 18 in isolation (examining it’s rhythm and structure) and then reading Sonnet 18,19,and 20 as a sequential set, cognizant of using a Queer theory model as a prism for understanding their meanings. Reading Sonnet 18 by itself conjures images of the fairest of maidens (who look something of the like of Juliet), an incandescent breath of youth who stimulates the poet to want to immortalize her with his verse.
It is a beautiful, sweet, romantic (bordering on sappy) poem, and one that reminds us that everything is ephemeral. It makes sense that the speaker in the poem is addressing a woman, as
In Sonnet 19,
the poet protests about the ravages of Time before presenting the ultimate bargain: that the poet’s “my love,” a
he, be spared of its atrophying effects so that his ideal beauty may be beheld by future generations (“For beauty's pattern to succeeding men” (19.12)).
From a modern perspective, this strikes odd (aside from the implication that this poem is inherently “queer”) since today we tend to revere woman’s beauty, not men’s. Furthermore, woman were as—if not more—objectified in Elizabethan society, since, as
scholar Caroll Camden wrote, “[for] it appears to be the order of nature that what is lacking in one sex is supplied in the other, and since man is endowed with wit, judgement, and a mind almost divine,[...] woman is given bodily beauty that she may be superior to man in this respect.”
Well, in Sonnet 19, it is a young man’s beauty that is valued, leaving the poor maidens in the shadows of passivity and invisibility.
In Sonnet 20, the poet describes in the “master-mistress of my passion” who is has a face as lovely as a woman and her gentle heart, although in fickle like a woman is prone to be.
Whoa—wait a minute!
How could an Elizabethan woman be fickle when her ultimately—and, really, only—duty is to be constant, to remain dutiful to her master (whether it be her husband or her father)?
Obviously, nothing was pure, and to mention female infidelity means it did happen, or, at the very least, was feared.
It is very interesting to hear this young man, perfect in every way except for been equipped with male genitalia, objectified in the way that one would associate with a woman.
Whether this object of the male’s gaze is a friend or lover, the writing expresses that his love for him is deeper and more genuine than he could want with a woman.
Ah, the perfect Elizabethan is a young man.
We have met a couple of Shakespeare’s dark ladies, but I have a perverse curiosity to poke around the private world of The Dark Lady of his sonnets. In Sonnet 144, the speaker compares his fair male companion, “the better angel,” to the “worser spirit a woman colour’d ill” who “tempteth my better angel from my side.” Those are some pretty damning words for the dark seductress the speaker spends 28 poems in heated obsession over. The poet squeezed like a vice between unadulterated love and the corruptive enticement of lustful desire. The speaker goes on to say in Sonnet 147 that he thought this dark, erotic temptress was good, but is actually “as black as hell, as dark as night.” An infidelity theme resonates again as he insists that she lies to him and is unfaithful, He asks, “But wherefore says she not she is unjust?” Ironically, it is he who is consumed by his love for her, and it is she who has him by the noose. In Sonnet 145, the Dark Lady, “Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate' /To me that languish'd for her sake,” and only correct herself to add “not you” when she saw how distraught he was. The man is whipped by a woman; a woman whose role is to be subservient. Does he have a shrew for a lover? Is he so beguiled by her womanly powers, her powerful dark forces that have the ability to control the moon? She is not so fair, she is so dark. So dark, so deep that he cannot wield the upper hand. It is nice to see that not every female was not either beaten into docility or burned at the stake. 
