Sonnet 44

Hello Shakespeareans and welcome back to the Secret Five Act Structure of the Sonnets Podcast.  Today we’re looking at Sonnet 44.  I highly encourage you to read this poem before and after listening to the episode.  This will enhance your experience because it enables you to come to your own conclusions.  I will always give you my viewpoint, but it’s up to you to have your own opinion.

However, before we begin, I’d like to remind you that my email is sonnetspodcast@gmail.com and the website for the podcast is www.sonnetspodcast.com.  Make sure you put in the www or else it won’t work.

So, before I read this poem, I want to give you its place within the 11x14, five act structure.  First off, Sonnet 44 is part of a pair.  It needs to be read with Sonnet 45 to be fully understood, which we’ll be examining next week.  Together these two poems slot in as Sonnets 4.2 and 4.3.  They are the second and third poems of Section 4 which is the beginning of Act 2.  Sonnet 4.1 introduces the idea of a secret that’s somewhat in the open that no one can see.  This is the start of Section 4’s narrative arc, and I covered that in-depth last week.  Now, unlike other sections, Section 4 does not follow the classic 4442 framework.  There are no 3 quatrains.  Rather, it’s a unique arrangement of 16232 - which means one introduction, six poems about man vs self, 2 poems for the turn about why the narrator is temporarily abandoning the structure, 3 poems which return to the themes of Sonnet 4.1, and then a couplet wrapping things up.  So, 16232.  You don’t have to memorize this, but you should because understanding the concept will help you get the big picture.

Sonnets 4.2 and 4.3 begin a run of six sonnets or three pairs.  All focus on Man vs Self themes, or at least that’s one way to frame it, all contain references to secrets, they are all quite challenging in their own ways, and lastly, they are rarely anthologized.  But, before we get too far into this episode, I want to give you full disclosure: I don’t fully understand 4.2 and 4.3.  I find them both cryptic and ambiguous.  If you’ve done your homework, then you’ve also read them.  In which case, what do you think?  Do you have ideas?  I’ve simplified things a bit to create a clear narrative, but it’s fair to wonder what I might be missing.  Or more simply, there are so many ways to interpret these poems, which center about distance and separation, that I don’t think it’s appropriate to suggest one correct answer.

I know you’re here listening to me to get answers, but today it might be more appropriate to say, rather than answers, we’re here to talk about questions.  Now, I’m not saying I have nothing to say.  Rather, I don’t feel confident making any strong declarations.  In preparation for this episode, I’ve studied multiple sources on these two poems and they didn’t give me much help.  Honestly, most sources have very little to say.  Sure, I have a rudimentary understanding of what is happening, but my explanation is mostly - big picture.  For other sonnets, I’ve got chapters of ideas to add, things that no one else has ever said.  But here, with these two sonnets, as I just said, I’ve got plenty of unanswered questions.

So, you now have an excuse to skip this episode, but I also believe in transparency.  Today, what I’m going to do is discuss what the first of these poems accomplishes in the narrative and I will share various ideas.  However, I will not be going line by line, as I did with Sonnet 43.  I don't think that accomplishes anything because this poem is just not plain clear.  Or rather, there are so many potential explanations that if I decide on one, I’ll just be picking it out of a hat.  Having said that, these are the only two sonnets in Section 4 that I feel this way about.  I suppose this episode takes a unique approach, but it should be a one off.

Lastly, I’m not going to explain these poems in a traditional sense.  To fully understand the four elements, I will have to give a long lecture about Renaissance thoughts on conventional health.  To be clear, and I just want to be direct: do you or I actually care about this?  We’re here to understand the Secret Five Act Structure, not the elements of earth, fire, wind, and water.  If those motifs give us useful information, that’s great.  Otherwise, I prefer to gloss over those details.  I feel confident that I can connect the metaphors to the Secret Structure without a deep analysis of 400 year old medical theories.  So please forgive me and I hope you can enjoy this episode for what it is.

Okay.  Here is the first poem.  This is Sonnet 44 or Sonnet 4.2:

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,

Injurious distance should not stop my way,

For then, despite of space, I would be brought

From limits far remote, where thou dost stay.

No matter then although my foot did stand

Upon the farthest earth removed from thee,

For nimble thought can jump both sea and land

As soon as think the place where he would be.

But, ah, thought kills me that I am not thought,

To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,

But that, so much of earth and water wrought,

I must attend time’s leisure with my moan;

 Receiving nought by elements so slow

 But heavy tears, badges of either’s woe.

Since I know that’s hard to follow, here’s the No Fear Modern Translation:

If I were made of thought instead of slow, dull flesh, this wicked distance between us wouldn’t keep me from where I wanted to be. No matter the distance—from the farthest possible regions—I would bring myself to where you are. It wouldn’t matter that my feet were standing on the spot on earth farthest from you: Thought is nimble enough to jump over both sea and land as quickly as it can think about the place it wants to be. But, ah, it’s killing me to think that I’m not made of thought and can’t leap over the many miles when you are gone. Instead my body is made of so much earth and water that I have to fill the long time without you with my moans. The leaden, deep earth and slow, wet water of which I am made give me nothing but heavy tears.

If I were to paraphrase this poem with a short one sentence summary, it would be this: due to my limitations, I am far from you and this makes me sad.  So, let’s focus on what I believe is the main theme, and that’s distance.  This topic will be even more central when we get to the horse sonnets of 4.8 and 4.9.  But here, let’s just try to ponder what this concept of distance is supposed to mean?  Then, we’ll try to decide why it makes the narrator sad.  

At this point, I’m going to make a bold leap and repeat what I already said, I don’t think we’ll get a single answer to these questions in this poem.  I realize I am creating a convenient solution, but I also believe that I am being consistent.  In other words, we will look at this entire section as a whole unit.  In the same way that one line doesn’t explain a poem and one chapter doesn’t explain a book, this one poem doesn’t explain a section.  As such, I will refer back to the ideas of Sonnet 4.1, this poem’s immediate predecessor. So, let’s give some candidates for what the narrator could be separated from.  

Candidate 1: us.  This poem is directed at us.  He is talking to the reader and he feels separated from us.  We know the secret but now he’s dead.  This idea was just introduced in Sonnet 4.1.  If Shakespeare could come back from the dead, he could share this experience with us, but he can’t and that makes him sad.  Well, this is a bit sentimental and wildly self-aggrandizing.  Alas, it’s not really consistent with the work as a whole.  Also, rather than be sad, Shakespeare could have told people while he was alive.  It is an option, but, if yes, it begs the question: why did Shakespeare create this situation?  It makes sense, but it doesn’t.  So, a fun idea, but not a good one.  I’m not gonna lie, though.  I wish this was the answer.  However, I think this idea fails immediately when shared with others.  Imagine telling a friend that Shakespeare was talking to you through his sonnets and lamenting the fact that you and him would never speak because you were separated by time.  I mean, we can feel this emotion when we read the poem, but, if we suggest that this was the author’s actual intent, it makes us sound like nut jobs and undermines the entire credibility of both this podcast and the secret structure in general.  So, again, fun, but not the best option.

Candidate 2: the Young Man or the poems themselves.  In this possibility, the poem is directed at all the other poems.  This is a possibility since this is the part of The Sonnets that is traditionally considered the Young Man section.  So, he is a likely candidate.  However, does this make sense?  If so, Shakespeare is saying that because of his limitations as a poet, he is far away from the poems, and this makes him sad.  If we’re ignoring the structure, this could work, but it doesn’t tie in thematically with Sonnet 4.1.

And lastly, Candidate 3: the structure.  The idea is that this poem is directed at the 11x14 structure.  In this reading, Shakespeare is breaking his own rules.  He is far away from 4442 and this makes him sad.  He loves his Secret Five Act Structure, and 4442 and 16232 are not the same thing.  As you can see in the rest of this work, the Bard is insanely rigid in following this format.  However, he’s not doing it here.  This sonnet, 4.2 is technically where he breaks off.  For a writer like Shakespeare, one who has always been obsessed with structure, in both his plays and his sonnets, this is for him a tragic moment. 

So, this makes sense to me and it lines up with the themes of Section 4, but does it make sense to you?  That’s not to say that the first two candidates don’t have merit.  Heck, maybe it’s all three at once.  However, I believe that Candidate 3, the Structure is the best answer.  If this is true, we still need to connect it to Sonnet 4.1, a poem about the structure being out in the open for anyone who wants to see it.  Therefore, is this an acceptable continuation?  Or, to be more apt: do these two poems have narrative continuity?  Because it’s kind of important if we want Section 4 and Act 2 to work.

In truth, my answer is yes, but it’s not a hard yes.  These are different topics, but if they’re different quatrains, or whatever a quatrain is supposed to be in section 4, then yes, this works.  However, it would be disingenuous to ignore reality.  Sonnet 4.2 changes the subject.  So, on the surface, we could have a problem.  But, we don’t.  The best reason is that the themes of Sonnet 4.1 are revisited in Sonnets 4.10-4.12 and because we know that Sonnet 4.2 sets up the theme of breaking the structure, which is a major theme of Section 4.  In other words, we need the context of many other poems to put these two poems together.

Finally, there is some textual evidence to support the idea that it’s the structure that I’d like to point out.  That’s lines 7-10.  I will quote them in a second, but the thing I want you to notice is that Shakespeare uses both 2nd and 3rd person pronouns.  In line 8, he refers to quote “he,” and in line 10, he says quote “thou.”  Here’s the lines:

For nimble thought can jump both sea and land

As soon as think the place where he would be.

But, ah, thought kills me that I am not thought,

To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,

We can debate the meaning of these lines, but it’s strange to say that “thou” and “he” are the same person.  I believe this strengthens the interpretation that Shakespeare is talking about the theme that the poems are moving away from the structure, which overall ties in with the themes of Section 4.  My reading is that the 3rd person “he” is the poems and the 2nd person “thou” as in “thou art gone” is the secret structure.  Shakespeare is suggesting that he will do anything to write his poems even abandon the structure.  Seemingly, this makes him sad because he really likes the 11x14 five act construct.

Additionally, the use of both 2nd and 3rd person pronouns clearly indicates that we’re dealing with three characters: the narrator, he, and thou.  The interesting thing here is that the Secret Structure is no longer feminine.  As I’ve stated many times in this podcast, the Dark Lady is a personification of the structure.  However, we’re seeing here pretty clearly that for Acts 2, 3, and 4, the structure isn’t really gendered.  It’s a strange twist, but it’s easy enough for us to follow.

I have more ideas, but let’s introduce the next poem before continuing.  In other words, I think this is a good pause moment.  In the next episode, we’ll complete this pair.  Thanks for listening.