The Prize for Thieves - Sonnet 48 (4.6)

Hello Shakespeareans and welcome back to The Meta-Sonnets Podcast.  This Episode is called - The Prize for Thieves.  Today we’ll be exploring Sonnet 4.6, better known as Sonnet 48.  It’s my hope that you’ll study the poem before and after reading the episode.  To me, I see this as a poem that’s all about the Secret Structure, but I don’t want you to just take my word for this.  Please do your own research and come to your own conclusions.  Additionally, I want to remind you that my email is sonnetspodcast@gmail.com and the website for the podcast is www.sonnetspodcast.com.

Okay, so I want to start this episode with a question: did Shakespeare ever give a thought to the person or persons who would someday uncover the meta-sonnets and discover the secret five act structure?  Obviously, we have no historical evidence and I can’t speak to a ghost.  Hence, there’s not much to go on, but, having said that, let’s just play a thought exercise and please humor me.  Let’s assume three things that I’ve already asserted in this podcast.  That is Shakespeare created meta-sonnets, hid them, and assumed someday someone would discover them.  

The first idea is all in the poems.  Regardless of how the meta-sonnets are interpreted, readers can get from them what they want.  Second, while there is textual evidence to explain why Shakespeare may have hid the secret structure, the simple truth that it was hidden is itself proof.  For regular listeners, this has all been covered before.  

However, what about the third idea?  If Shakespeare really did everything I’ve suggested, did he ever give thought to the person or persons who’d find his buried treasure?  Well, if that’s true, that means that Shakespeare was indirectly thinking about me.  But, and I want to be very clear, if you think I’m going to gush all over myself, please allow me to immediately shut that down.  In this poem, Shakespeare describes this person as a thief and has nothing but disdain for them.  This person is not some glorious treasure hunter who completed a quest.  Rather, they’re a jerk who has stolen something that was never theirs.  So, if you want to brush me off and call me a delusional idiot, well, you’re 400 years late because Shakespeare already did the dirty work.

Now, at the end of the episode, I will offer some of my candid personal thoughts on this, but for now, I want to explore this sonnet.  In all honesty, this episode may be a little dry, as I will be going line by line through the poem.  My claim that the poem is potentially about the discoverer of the meta-sonnets is an ambitious claim and it requires hard textual evidence.  However, if that gets too tedious for you, and you want my wrap up, I’ll put it in the show notes so that you can skip ahead.  Additionally, the thief in the poem could be other contemporary poets.  This is not a wild idea and it deserves fair consideration.  It’s not as salacious though, but it is possible too.

I’ll be honest.  This is a complicated poem, but it’s also rewarding and filled with nuggets that most readers don’t see, and I hope this episode allows you to further enjoy it.

Either way, let’s continue, and before we dive in, I want to properly introduce the characters, of which I see three or possibly four.  The first is the narrator, which could be Shakespeare, but it’s probably a literary persona.  

The second character is the thieves.  In this poem, the poet is rather concerned about either something precious getting taken or something hidden being revealed.  As I just stated, the thief or thieves are either Shakespeare contemporaries who are hack writers ripping him off.  Or, the thief is the unworthy idiot who solved the puzzle and used it to enrich himself.  Regardless, the thief is more or less a new character.

The third character is the second person “thou” and “thee.”  The word “thou” is used four times and the word “thee” is used once.  Seemingly, this person can be a few different characters.  Mostly likely, it’s the poems.  However, it could be the meta-sonnets too, but I feel like there’s less evidence for that.  Having said that, there is a third option: one very complicated interpretation is that “thou” is talking to the poems and that “thee” is a reference to the meta-sonnets.  The idea is that the Narrator is talking to two different listeners.  I believe there is enough evidence to interpret the poem this way, and I will address both options when we get to line 9.  However, I don’t think either version radically changes our final interpretation of Sonnet 4.6’s main idea.  

So, in summary, the three characters are the narrator, the thieves, and the entity to whom the sonnets is addressed, likely the poems.  Okay, let’s begin.  Here is Sonnet 4.6 or Sonnet 48:

How careful was I, when I took my way,

Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,

That to my use it might unusèd stay

From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!

But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,

Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,

Thou best of dearest and mine only care

Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.

Thee have I not locked up in any chest,

Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,

Within the gentle closure of my breast,

From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part;

And even thence thou wilt be stol’n, I fear,

For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.

And here’s the No Fear Shakespeare Summary:

I used to be so careful when I’d travel to secure all my trivial possessions with the most reliable locks available so criminals wouldn’t tamper with them. But you, so much more precious than my jewels and my greatest comfort, have become my greatest sadness and worry, because you’re vulnerable to any common thief. I haven’t locked you up in any chest, other than in my own chest, where my heart is, and you’re not really there, even though I feel that you are. You can come and go from my heart as you please, and I’m afraid you’ll be stolen from there, because even an honest man would turn thief to get such a rich prize.

Alright, my plan for Sonnet 4.6 is to go through it line by line, much like I did for Sonnet 4.1.  If you want to get the most out of this listening experience, it really will help if you’ve done your homework and studied the poem before proceeding.  Otherwise, it will be tough to get through the rest of the episode.  I’m not giving that disclaimer because I think it’s a bad script.  I mean, it’s not my best script, but this is the best I can do with this poem and I’ve spent more time on this script than I want to admit.  I have a lot of deep ideas to explore and I want to cover them all.  This isn’t because I’m intentionally long winded.  Rather, if I short change this, I’m not doing my job, and, in all honesty, the transcript from the website might be more useful than this recording.  Regardless, I’m jumping in and I hope you like this deep dive.

Lines 1 and 2: “How careful was I, when I took my way, each trifle under truest bars to thrust.”

In my reading, which I must emphasize is just mine, this reads as: “When I set out on this journey to write this work, I was really careful hiding little things between the lines.”  The two words that catch my eye are quote “trifle” and “bars.”  The implication is that the amazing things that we see through the prism of the meta-sonnet structure are just “trifles,” or small things.  Beautiful, but not important.  Now, it’s impossible for me to imagine the meta-sonnets to be a mere trifle, but that’s the framework for this poem.  The word, “bars,” seems like a perfectly adequate word to describe a line of poetry, much like a bar of music, and, if it’s not a reference to a line of poetry, what is it?  The third most interesting word is “thrust.”  This implies a forceful entry or some sort to strength.  One way to look at it is that Shakespeare really wanted the meta-sonnets to be fairly well hidden.

Lines 3 and 4: “That to my use it might unusèd stay from hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!”

I find these full lines to be quite fun to explore.  I read it as: I wanted the secret to stay hidden so that it would stay safe away from the thieves.  Now, does Shakespeare actually mean this?  Did he want no one to find it?  Maybe.  I can’t speak for actual authorial intent, but I can guess.  I suspect that maybe the achievement was more important than recognition.  Shakespeare died with half his plays unpublished.  It is perfectly conceivable that he was not in a hurry to show off his meta-sonnets.

However, what is quote “hands of falsehood?”  This is seemingly hack writers who imitate their betters.  It’s unclear how Shakespeare felt about his contemporaries and literary rivals, but we do know that he read them.  In the case of Sir Philip Sidney, he definitely imitated him.  However, in Shakespeare’s lifetime, Sidney was a literary giant, and he was also dead.  Maybe “falsehood” is somehow a reference to the Bard’s private life.  Clearly, regardless of interpretation, The Sonnets is a personal work, and maybe Shakespeare didn’t want people talking about his private life.

The last option is that “hands of falsehood” is a reference to the people who’d eventually discover the secret structure.  However, I don’t see how I could apply the concept of “falsehood.”  Irregardless of whomever found this, why would someone lie about what they found?  Maybe they could, but this doesn’t completely make sense.  If someone is trying to examine Shakespeare’s poetry for deeper meaning, they aren't fake.  So, it’s perplexing.  We don’t get a clean answer, but we have plenty to speculate about and readers can probably come to different conclusions.

And one final thing before we move on - notice that the second person has not been introduced yet.  Additionally, a liar and a thief aren’t the same thing.  So, the way I most want to frame them, the concept of being a thief, hasn’t yet properly been produced.

Line 5: “But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are.”

Now that we’re in a new quatrain, the second one that is, the narrator is bringing in his main character, the second person “thou.”  Seemingly, this is the poems, as it makes the most sense.  The idea of this line is that the poems don’t care much about the secret structure.  To the poems, Shakespeare’s crowning achievement is a minor thing.  This is a reverse from line one.  In line one, the meta-sonnets were a trifle.  Now it’s a jewel being viewed as a trifle.  These aren’t the same ideas, but it’s what we have.  They're similar, but also a little contradictory.  

Zooming out, this does connect to the overall theme of what’s happening.  The poems don’t care about the structure.  That’s why, in Section 4, they are ruining it.  The poems have taken a wrecking ball to 3 quatrains and a couplet and left us with 16232.  It’s a mess, but the poems don’t care.  This is such a funny idea.  The narrator is so proud of what he’s doing behind the scenes, but he isn’t getting any love from the one place he wants it, and that’s from the poems themselves.  Seemingly, it’s like telling a poem, “aren’t you proud to be a sonnet?’’...only to be told, “not really.  It doesn’t matter to me.”

Line 6: “Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief”

This is a line directed at the poems.  He describes them as being both his “worthy comfort” and “greatest grief.”  They make him happy and they make him sad which is a duality that most people can understand.  The concept is hard, but the meaning is rich because we need to ask why?  There’s plenty of reasons why an artist might feel both agony and ecstasy towards their work, but what are Shakespeare’s reasons?  To find out, let’s continue.

Lines 7 and 8: “Thou best of dearest and mine only care art left the prey of every vulgar thief.”

Ok, so Shakespeare starts by reinforcing the idea that The Sonnets is the only thing in the world that he cares about.  We’ve known this for a while.  It’s not novel, but the explanation is a brand new idea.  “Thou are left the prey for every vulgar thief.”  

Now, first off, I want to address the concepts of plagiarism and authorship because, during the Renaissance, they were very different than they are now.  For example, a large portion of Shakespeare’s plays were stories ripped off from other sources.  I say ripped off because he didn’t pay royalties or give credit.  Technically, many of the stories would have been in the public domain, but again, this is also a modern concept.  The idea of authorial ownership as we in modern times would understand it is just different.  I mean copyright laws didn’t exist four hundred years ago.  So, we should do our best to understand this in context even if this sounds like a call for copyright protection. 

My view is that this is not a simple idea.  The simplistic version is that Shakespeare wanted to protect his secret structure.  However, as he’s stating in this poem, the words trump the structure.  The poems themselves are more valuable, or at least that’s what I think he’s saying.  At times in the work, this meaning will flip around, but we’re in Section 4.  In Section 4, the poems trump the structure.  So, this is confusing.  What is there to actually steal?  For me, I’m in the camp that Shakespeare always intended to publish The Sonnets.  You can disagree, but I believe that he always knew that the poems would be public.  So, there was never a matter of keeping the poems a secret.  Or at least that’s what I think.  Again, you can disagree, and maybe I’m wrong.

But, regardless, let’s stick with my line of thinking and run it to its logical conclusion: what is it that a vulgar thief could steal?  Now, I’ll be honest, I want it to be the meta-sonnets.  I want this to be the thing that Shakespeare wants to protect from theft.  However, I have two problems.  First, we’re in Section 4 when the structure doesn’t matter, and second, in this poem, the secret structure is, at times, just a trifle.  It’s like someone saying that they’re afraid a robber will break into their house and steal the blender off their kitchen counter.  Now I don't know about you, I like my blender, but it’s just a trifle.  It’s not on the list of things I actually care about.

So, we have a conundrum with which to reckon.  I think it’s possible to perform some mental gymnastics to make this work, but I also want to be truthful that I’m contorting and bending the truth to better serve my ends.  However, we still need to figure out: what is worth stealing?  What is there to plunder?  If the poems themselves are readily available to purchase and any wannabe writer with some parchment and a quill can imitate The Sonnets, what does this mean?  As we all know, William Shakespeare did not invent the sonnet and he wasn’t the first to publish a sonnet sequence.  He was late to the party in both instances.  Any mediocre writer could have easily ripped off Sir Philip Sidney or Sir Edmund Spenser and they wouldn’t have needed Shakespeare.

Now, I’m a fan of both Sidney and Spenser, but they aren’t the Bard.  However, there’s only two real differences between their sonnet sequences and Shakespeare’s: one is quality and the other is the meta-sonnets.  Other than that, they are pretty similar.  I’m not suggesting they’re the same, but the style and subject matter overlap in many ways.  Hence, it’s not wild to group them together.  That isn’t to say that Shakespeare may not have seen it this way.  He may have thought that his sonnet sequence was completely unique and unrelated to others.  Sure, that’s possible.  However, if he did believe this, it probably had something to do with the meta-sonnets.  But, like I said, that idea is not fully supported in this poem.

So, what is there to steal?  If it’s the meta-sonnets, then that is an answer.  However, it’s not an easy thing to rip off.  Certainly it’s possible to create a 11x14 framework or something newly original.  However, that’s the point.  Other than the meta-sonnets, what else is there?  Is the structure a jewel or a trifle?  I think we can make this idea work, but again, I want to highlight the contradictions.

And now it’s time for the turn.  

Line 9: “Thee have I not locked up in any chest.”

There’s two words that I want to immediately spotlight.  The first is the word “thee.”  Seemingly, to most readers, this is the same person as “thou,” and that could be true, but I think there’s room for another interpretation.  As I earlier stated, what if, instead of the poems, this was the structure?  In other words, to start the turn, what if the Narrator is talking to the meta-sonnets?  I believe this is feasible, but begs the question, what is the narrator telling them?  This brings us to the last word in line 9: “chest.”  “Thee have I not locked up in any chest.”  Now, “chest” seemingly has an obvious context.  The poem has references to jewels and trifles.  To most readers, when they read the word “chest,” they are imagining some sort of treasure chest.  However, while not inherently wrong, it’s also short sighted.  Think about the last two poems.  They were a war between the poet’s eye and heart.  In both poems, we established that the heart is the structure, and where is the heart located?  In the chest of a person’s body?  If these poems were not next to each other, I would call it a coincidence, but the word choice and proximity is too specific to not be relevant.  Furthermore, this is supported by line 11 with the phrase “gentle enclosure of my breast.”  Therefore, it is perfectly valid to think that the word “chest” is a reference to a person’s torso.

Moving forward, in this vein of thought, the poet’s heart is not in his chest, it is out and about.  It makes sense that “thee” and “thou” could be different people.  Lastly, the big point is the structure is not locked up.  It’s out in the world.  It may be hidden, but it’s hidden in plain sight.  Line 9 has a lot of drama, and it’s a very effective turn.

Line 10 and 11: “Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art within the gentle closure of my breast.”  

I am a little confused by this.  A modernized reading is: save where you are not, though I feel you are within my breast.  “Save where thou art not” is trickier than it might first seem.  However, here’s my take.  I think the main idea is that the meta-sonnet and the sonnet are separated.  The poems are where the structure isn't.  Furthermore, the sonnets, unlike the meta-sonnets, are within the poet’s heart.  The big idea is that they are not together which supports the main idea of the Section.  I’m not saying this is the permanent arrangement.  Rather, its what’s happening in the story right now.

Line 12: “From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part.”

I think this line can have many meanings, but I want to emphasize the rhyme words for lines 10 and 12: “art” and “part.”  Regardless of what a reader wants to make of Line 12, there’s a clear reinforcement that in Section 4, Shakespeare is creating art by splitting poetry and form.

For me, the way I want to interpret this line is that the poems are in control doing whatever they want, at their “pleasure.”

Couplet: “And even thence thou wilt be stol’n, I fear, for truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.”

The closing of the poem is that the treasure will be stolen.  As I’ve already explored in the poem, there’s serious questions about what can be stolen.  What is it?  Since he uses “thou,” I will start by assuming this is the poems, and that the Sonnets will be stolen.  Okay, well it’s entirely possible that this happened in real life.  Most historians suspect that the 1609 publication may not have been authorized by the author.  If so, someone else made money off Shakespeare’s words.  However, this poem doesn’t sound like it's about monetary compensation, fame, or credit.  It’s something else.

When Shakespeare says “thou wilt be stolen,” this a prediction that it will happen no matter what.  Nothing can stop the eventual theft.  However, we still don’t know for certainty what will be stolen.  It could be the poems.  It could be the meta-sonnets.  It could be something else and I’m completely off base.

Having said that, line 14 gives us something to work with: “truth proves thievish for a prize so dear” or as No Fear puts it: “an honest man would turn thief to get such a rich prize.”  I think this means that Shakespeare is convinced that the truth is anyone would become a thief for the prize.  This is hyperbole, namely because plenty of people wouldn’t, but it’s a nice sentiment.

I want to close with two big ideas.  The first is that, with this episode, I feel that I’ve both proven and not proven my ideas.  In that, I mean that I feel thematically, I’ve given you an abundance of commentary so that I am confident that you’ve heard enough to believe this poem fits in thematically with the narrative arc of Section 4.  At the same time, within the poem itself, there’s a lot of ambiguity.  I’m not sure if this authorial intent, my shortcomings as a reader, or something else.  However, there’s plenty more to play with.

The second big idea is one that I teased early in the episode.  This idea is that the thief is me.  Admittedly, this seems like a cool idea, but I will be first to assert that this podcast is not about me.  However, given it’s gemaine to the poem, this is an idea that I want to play with.  In his lifetime, Shakespeare had no concept of his legacy as a poet, but he likely would have understood that it would be posthumous.  Most poets only achieve fame in death, and this is a concept Shakespeare would have been familiar with.  The Sonnets was published towards the end of Shakespeare’s career.  So, unlike Philip Sidney who died before publication, he would have been alive to judge the public’s reaction, but having said that, he was about to retire and move back to Stratford-upon-Avon.

Now, let’s look past that into the speculative world of this podcast.  Shakespeare seemingly dies with his secret intact.  My assumption is that Shakespeare believed the Secret Structure would eventually be figured out, that the mystery would be solved.  In this, the Bard was correct, but it took four centuries.  However, the thing that’s interesting for us is that Shakespeare had no idea of guessing who would be the person who solved his puzzle. 

For us, Shakespeare has the most amazing legacy of any writer ever, but it’s hard for us to separate this from what Shakespeare may have thought about his own legacy.  I’ll be honest, I have no secret knowledge to share and I’m not going to pretend to know anything beyond what’s in the poems.  However, there is an idea we can play with.  What did Shakespeare think of the person who would eventually discover this secret?  Most likely the person would have to be a poet, as they would be the one with the mind to unlock the poems.  Well, what might Shakespeare have thought of this person?   Surprisingly, how about a low class thief?  Imagine calling the person who’d discover your secret a common criminal?  

Well, if this interpretation is valid, here’s the question: what am I stealing from Shakespeare?  The reality is that authorial intent may not matter because there’s 400 years of legacy to cloud our opinion, and also, what am I taking from Shakespeare?  To be honest, I’m stealing nothing from him.  The people from whom I’m actually stealing are all the Shakespeareans who now have to reckon with what the meta-sonnets mean.  They lived their whole lives thinking Shakespeare was something, but I’ve come along and stolen that from them.  The Bard couldn’t have predicted this, but I am a thief regardless.  As for my prize, I get the joy of reading the poems.  Beyond that, only time will tell. 

In all honesty, I hate talking about myself in this capacity as it seems completely ridiculous.  For me to think this discovery makes me special is for me to push away people in just about every setting, and instead of being put on a pedestal, it makes me feel like I’m an outcast.  I fully realize that if the Meta-Sonnets become mainstream, the idea could forever change Shakespearean scholarship and hundreds of years from now, it could be still studied.  However, my contribution is just the idea and that’s all I want.  If I can make some money from this or use it to better my career in education, that’s great.  However, I don’t want to convey anything that resembles a cocky delusion of grandeur.  As the poem states, there’s no joy coming from the author, and that’s fine.

In all honesty, I’m fine with this episode getting buried in the stream much the same way this poem itself got lost in the sonnet sequence.  Someday in the future, I will further explain my relationship with The Sonnets and where all this came from.  I suppose it’s an interesting story, but it’s not the main plotline and I prefer to keep this focus on Shakespeare.  However, this poem caused this episode to go this way.  If you felt it too self-aggrandizing, then I hope you can accept my apology, and I’m sorry for stealing your time.  Either way, see you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening.