Sonnet 47 (4.5)

Hello Shakespeareans and welcome back to The Sonnets podcast.  In this episode we’ll be examining Sonnet 47 or, as I number it, Sonnet 4.5.  You are encouraged to study the poem before and after listening to the episode.  Please come to your own conclusions and use my commentary as a guide to help you in your own readings.  Additionally, I hope you have already listened to the previous episode.  Sonnets 4.4 and 4.5 are a pair.  As such, they have a lot in common, and much of that I already covered last week.  In all honesty, they are very similar.  Therefore, while I will refer to some of those ideas, I don’t want this episode to feel too redundant.  It’s okay for Shakespeare to be derivative at times, but I’m unworthy of that luxury.  So, please understand that this episode will intentionally be different from its predecessor.

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.  Plus, if you prefer to read rather than listen, all transcripts are on the website.  If you haven’t noticed by now, I like to front load all the key information at the top of the episode.  That way, if going through the poem is too tedious, you can skip the rest of the episode and still have the main ideas.  Obviously, I want you to listen to the whole thing, but I live in the real world and I listen to podcasts too.  I’m certainly not the Bard of podcasting, but I’m doing my best and I hope that’s good enough.

Okay.  As we jump into this episode, I want to start with the big picture.  So, where are we?  Sonnet 47 doesn’t tell us much and that’s because the number 47 isn’t all that useful.  So, let me give you a quick refresher on my numbering system.  It may seem confusing at first, but it's actually very simple, and if I can be frank, it’s the only way to not get lost.  I’m pretty decent with mental math, but dealing with a factor of 14 is challenging, especially once you get past the first few sections.  That’s why I invented a numbering system.  Here’s how it works.  In my numbering system, Sonnet 47 is actually Sonnet 4.5.  The first number, that is the number four, tells us that this is Section 4.  The second number tells us the sonnet in the section.  So, Sonnet 4.5 is the fifth sonnet in Section 4.  It’s not that complicated, and it’s honestly a variation on how we reference Shakespeare’s plays.  For example, if I said, Hamlet 1.1.1, you know that’s Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1, line 1.  If that’s not confusing, then this shouldn’t be either.  Technically, I could add Act numbers to my system, but that seems unnecessary.  Act 1 has three sections and each subsequent act is made up of two sections.  Most readers can do that math in their head.

The advantage of this system is mostly in the second number, as it will go from 1-14.  As I’m sure you all know, a sonnet has three quatrains and a couplet.  Therefore, that number, 1 or 14 or any number in between clues us in on what to look for.  For example: if it’s sonnet 9, we know this is the turn and we should be looking for a twist or turn of some sort.  The narrative should be evolving.  Conversely, sonnet 3 should have similarities with the ones around it.  This numbering system helps me know when to look for change and when to look for overlapping ideas.  Quite honestly, it is essential.  If you haven’t taken ten minutes, I advise you to grab a pen and manually write in this numbering system in your copy of The Sonnets.  You’ll be glad you did.

Imagine reading a Shakespearean play without act and scene markers and also without indications of who the speaker was.  So you wouldn’t know the characters, and you’d only have three thousand or so unlabeled lines.  Just think about trying to get through A Midsummer Night’s Dream and it's only dialogue without distinctions for when scenes and speeches start or end.  Contemplate having no idea who was speaking and when.  You’d have some clues, but not enough.  This would be confusing and you’d probably miss alot.  Even if you already knew the play, you’d still probably be lost most of the time.

Well, without my numbering system, that’s the situation readers have been in for four hundred years.  We’ve had the poems, but without scene and act markers, readers have missed out on about half of what’s going on in the poems.

Okay, so I hope you enjoyed that preamble because it’s relevant for today.  Sonnet 4.5 is, simply put, out of place.  How do we know this?  Well, the fifth sonnet in a sequence should start a new idea or continue the idea started in the first four sonnets of the section.  The fifth sonnet will not have as harsh a change as a ninth or thirteenth sonnet, but it should have some sort of shift, even if it’s just tonal.  For example, in Section 1, the poems are basically all the same topic, but, in the three quatrains, there’s a clear tonal shift of hope, then frustration, and then sadness with a couplet that summarizes everything.

But, that’s not what we see here.  The point of this long introduction is that this is the big moment when we know for sure that something is wrong with the 4442 structure in Section 4.  It’s not uncommon for Shakespeare to show some fluidity in how he constructs his quatrains.  For example, Section 2 is basically 14 different poems with 14 different topics.  They group together, but there's a lot of thematic variation.

With Section 4 however, we’re hitting a roadblock.  Sonnets 4.4 and 4.5 are 100% a pair.  If they were anywhere else in the sequence, in any other section, they would be in the same quatrain.  This is how Shakespeare’s Sonnets works.  So, when we see a pair that strangely crosses over into different quatrains, something is wrong because something is out of place.

As I pointed out a few episodes ago, our first, “what is going on here” moment is in Sonnet 4.2 when there’s a big shift.  Sonnet 4.1 is forgotten just like the Betrayer sonnets were in the previous section.  In essence, Sonnet 4.2 is like we’re starting something new.  However, the shift from Sonnet 4.1 to 4.2 is something that we can somewhat overlook because Shakespeare does sometimes do this in a section where he’ll mash up sonnets, and it eventually makes sense at the end of the section.   Again, Section 2 is a good example of this.  If you don’t look at Sonnets 15-28 as a unit, you will never see the connections.

So, we can overlook the bizarreness of Sonnet 4.2 in relationship with it’s predecessor and say, we’ll check back later.  But, we can’t do this with Sonnet 4.5.  We have a clear pair that are not instantly connected to any poem around them and they aren’t in the same quatrain.  On the surface, this is a problem.  For critics of the secret five act structure, this is a perfect gotcha moment to prove it doesn’t exist.

When I was first really studying this years ago, I got really scared about now.  I thought the secret structure was falling apart.  Maybe Shakespeare only used it a little or maybe just sometimes.  Or maybe that’s why he didn’t make this idea public because it ended after Act 1.  My analysis was not as deep as it is now, and I was considering giving up on this whole thing and walking away.  The simple truth is that Sonnet 4.5 should not be Sonnet 4.5.  There is no reason for such an obvious pair to be in different quatrains.  

As you will see, big picture, this all makes sense and Section 4 is genius, but, in the moment, at this point in the section, it is worrying.  However, here’s the main idea.  Everything I’ve said only makes sense if you know to look for it.  Without understanding Sonnet 4.5’s location, you will miss everything I’ve told you so far in this episode.  Seemingly Shakespeare understood this and was fine with his readers not getting this point.  

Without the knowledge I’ve just shared, it’s impossible to see the big picture.  And by big picture, I mean this literary, as the word “picture” is used three times in the poem and seems to clearly be a reference to the big picture or at least it conveys the idea that the Sonnets is a singular piece of art, not a collection of poetry.  This is an important idea, and I’ll cover it later in the episode.

So, let’s get into the poem.  Thematically, I’m not going to dive in too deep, as much of this was covered in the last episode, but I will go over a few parts that stick out.

Here’s Sonnet 4.5:

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,

And each doth good turns now unto the other.

When that mine eye is famished for a look,

Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,

With my love’s picture then my eye doth feast

And to the painted banquet bids my heart.

Another time mine eye is my heart’s guest

And in his thoughts of love doth share a part.

So, either by thy picture or my love,

Thyself away are present still with me;

For thou no farther than my thoughts canst move,

And I am still with them, and they with thee;

 Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight

 Awakes my heart to heart’s and eye’s delight.

Here’s the No Fear Shakespeare Modern Translation:

My eye and my heart have reached an agreement, and now each does the other favors.  When my eye is starving to take a look at you or my heart smothers itself with sighs of love for you, then my eye feasts on a painting of you and invites my heart to join in the banquet and stare at the painting too.  On another occasion, my eye is the guest with whom my heart shares some of his thoughts of love.  So when you are gone, you’re still present with me, either through your painting or in my love for you: You can’t travel farther than my thoughts, and I’m always with them, and they are always with you.  Even if my thoughts go to sleep, your painting will wake up my heart and delight both heart and eyes.

Good, now let’s look at what’s new.  The difference between 4.4 and 4.5 is that, after the civil war in the previous poem, in Sonnet 4.5, the eye and the heart are working together.  Not necessarily always at the same time, but they are working together.  So, sometimes it’s the words, sometimes it’s the sonnet format.  Looked at another way, sometimes it’s the poems, other times it’s the secret structure.

The irony here is that they aren’t working together right now.  The eye is doing what it wants, but the heart is beating.  It has no pulse or at least it’s on life support, and that’s because the structure isn’t following the rules.

Now, I’m just going to be straight up: I’m intend to skip over the first twelve lines of this poem.  The reason is simple.  I think I’ve mostly covered it.  I also think the meaning isn’t in the lines, but rather the effect.  I cannot stress this point enough.  It’s not about the story of the poem, but rather the big picture.  Sonnet 4.5 breaks the structure by being so similar to Sonnet 4.4.  Thematically, there’s peace instead of war, but it’s not an otherwise overly complicated poem.  Yes, some of the language is a bit tricky, but the ideas, for example, don’t seem as dense as Sonnet 4.1.  

I do want to highlight the couplet though, because I think there’s something fun for us to play with.  There are three key concepts and they are at the start of both lines.  The first involves the idea of “sleep” and the second involves the idea of the “heart” waking up.  Additionally, we need to talk about the word “picture” because it’s used three times in the poem.  Honestly, the word “picture” is probably the key theme of the whole poem, but we’ll approach it from the angle of the couplet.  Speaking of which: here’s the couplet: “Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight awakes my heart to heart’s and eye’s delight.”

Now, I want to be clear, this couplet is ambiguous enough that multiple readers could get multiple interpretations.  You, as the listener, need to decide if this reading is valid.  You may have a different preference and that’s fine.  Having said that, here is how I read “Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight awakes my heart to heart’s and eye’s delight.”

The first thing I want to discuss is the word “picture” which is used in lines 5, 9, and 13.  That means “picture” is the first line of the 2nd quatrain, the 3rd quatrain, and the couplet.  That’s very deliberate placement and we need to talk about it.  My interpretation of the word picture is that it’s a reference to the work as a whole.  As in, The Sonnets aren’t 154 separate poems.  No.  Rather the poems are 154 individual brushstrokes creating a singular image.  I think this is a really important idea.  The narrator or Shakespeare, or both, are telling us that The Sonnets is a singular work, not a collection of poems.  This really goes back to Sonnet 4.1 which, if written by young Shakespeare, supports my theory that The Sonnets was always intended to be a 154 11x14 five act work.  Or maybe that’s the final form, but something like this was always in Shakespeare’s mind.

Moreover, the heart and eye debate or battle or whatever he’s doing in any individual poem, these motifs were always intended to be part of a larger whole.  Here we can appreciate that Shakespeare wants to address this idea of a picture.  As a reference, the word “picture” is used in two poems in The Sonnets.  Here in Sonnet 47, as well in Sonnet 24, which I believe has the same context.  However, let’s focus on Section 4.

Historically, the poems in The Sonnets have been read two ways: as individual poems or as groups.  Individually, any poem can be read in a vacuum, and, as a group, portions like Act 1 and Act 5 are obvious narratives.  Hence, readers have always been able to glean collective meaning from these streams of poems even if they had no conception of the structure.  I myself first experienced the Dark Lady sonnets in this way and I’m sure you did too.  So, what’s my point on this?  Well, I’m not a mindreader, but I’m confident enough to say that Shakespeare always intended for his poems to be interpreted as either one-offs or small groups.  There’s little point in debating this.

However, my assertion and the major point of this podcast is that Shakespeare also intended for the work to be viewed as a single piece of art.  Clearly, some critics might suggest this has also always been the case.  That, by putting all the poems in one book, they have always been a singular piece of art.  To this I say, yes, it is true.  As a volume of poetry, The Sonnets has always been one thing.  But, that conception and mine are not the same idea.  A volume of poetry centered about a major theme and singular work are different things.

This is where the word “picture” comes in.  Think of some of the most famous poetry volumes of all time or any volume for that matter.  Are they collections or pictures?  As a stand in for this discussion, I’ll randomly pick “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman because I want to talk about his poem “Song of Myself.”  “Leaves of Grass” is a famous volume of poetry with many themes and it does give us a view into Whitman’s ideas about life and theory of what poetry should be, namely that free verse is the future.  As readers, we can appreciate this collection as having a lot of overlap.  However, is “Leaves of Grass” a picture?  Is it a singular thing?  I mean, yes, sure anyone could make that argument and probably sound pretty smart, but I think most people can agree that this is not the mainstream view.  Compare that with “Song of Myself,” the most famous poem from that work.  “Song of Myself” is 1,300 lines and it has 52 parts.  When you read the poem, there are connections to be made between parts.  There is overlap.  While a reader can sample pieces of “Song of Myself,” there is plenty to be gleaned from the whole.  “Leaves of Grass” is a volume of poetry.  “Song of Myself” is a picture.

Even though he lived 300 years before Whitman, Shakespeare seemingly had the same idea.  He crafted The Sonnets to be a singular work.  That’s what the word “picture” means.  If you go an art museum and look at an enormous painting, you may walk up close and examine a small chunk to see what’s really happening up close.  But, then you step back and see how that small piece influenced the whole.  This is Shakespeare’s Sonnets.  It is a singular picture.  Yes, the picture was hidden, but it’s a picture nonetheless.

So, let’s connect all of this to the couplet: “Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight awakes my heart to heart’s and eye’s delight.”

The most challenging phrase in the couplet is at the beginning, “if they sleep.”  Now, in Sonnet 4.1, I established that “sleep” can either be a reference to Shakespeare’s death or the idea that the secret is sleeping, waiting to be woken up like Sleeping Beauty with a kiss.  Therefore, both of these themes are germane to Section 4 and not coming out of nowhere.  So, that’s what I think sleep means.  One of these two options.  Either the death of the writer or the interim until the picture is uncovered.  

However, what do we do with the word quote “they?”  A cheap answer is that it is a reference to both the “heart” and the “eye.”  I suppose this is a semi-suitable answer.  It’s not really wrong, but I just don’t think it’s good.  The reason I say this is because “heart” and “eye” are symbolic representations of the structure and words.  So, can they “both” sleep?  I can understand how the secret structure can sleep, but how can the words sleep?  I realize that The Sonnets weren’t published until late in Shakespeare’s life, but everything in all the other poems suggests these poems would be mass distributed at some point.  So, they can’t include the words.

Therefore, here’s my theory.  Maybe it’s not great, but I want to give you some sort of meaning.  My best guess is that quote “they” is the poems.  However, the context is that “they” means 154 separate poems.  Here’s the couplet again: “Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight awakes my heart to heart’s and eye’s delight.”  So, the collection of poems is sleeping.  Then, “thy picture in my sight awakes my heart,” means Shakespeare has always seen the fullness of the singular work.  Now, with the secret shared, the picture has awakened or rather it has come to life.  Now, the world knows about the secret and both the words and the secret structure are happy.

This is such a sweet idea.  I think the main idea to realize is that Shakespeare views these 154 poems as one very long poem.  He may zig and zag through the eleven sections, but, in the end, it’s all one piece of art to him.  

I want to close by saying that, before writing Season 2, I had never really thought about how much is lost by not knowing the secret structure.  Now, based on the textual evidence, I feel comfortable saying about half.  In other words, we have about twice as much meaning.  Is that a perfect number?  No, but it’s a marketable number and I can use it.

So, what did you think?  This episode wasn’t so much about the poem as it was about what effect it has on the Section.  Sonnet 4.5 may seem a bit derivative because it retreads Sonnet 4.4, but I hope this episode shows that that doesn’t matter.  There’s still a lot going on.  Even if it seems a bit repetitive, it’s not.  Shakespeare seemingly put this redundant poem here as a clue that he’s messing up the structure and he reminded us in the couplet that this was all part of the big picture.  

So yeah, that’s about it.  The next poem, Sonnet 4.6, begins our final pair in this sextet.  It’s about a treasure locked up in the heart.  Seemingly, that means a reference to the secret structure being intentionally hidden.  But more on that next time.  Thanks for listening.