18 - No Horse Can Keep Desire with My Pace - Sonnet 51 (4.9)

Hello Shakespeareans and welcome back to the Meta-Sonnets Podcast.  Sorry for the extended break, but life got in the way.  Anyway, today we’re going to look at Sonnet 51, also known as Sonnet 4.9.  As the ninth sonnet in a section, it should technically be the turn.  However, we’re in Section 4 and it has its own rules.  Sonnet 51 is a turn for sure, but not in a way that happens in any of the other 10 sections in the work.  It’s truly unique, and, on the surface, this may not be the most interesting of poems.  However, it’s function and what it accomplishes…well, that’s something different.  This sonnet works in a way that is both symbolic and tactile.  You can easily read this poem and not think it’s special.  However, once you see how it functions within the narrative, it will impress you.

Simply put, Sonnet 51 is an allegory.  Narratively the poet is riding a horse to his love, but the horse is slowing him down.  So, he dismounts his steed and runs because he’s faster on his own.  My assertion is that this is an allegorical manifestation of what’s happening narratively in the act.  For the first three sections, Shakespeare used the traditional 4442 arrangement.  However, since that structure is slowing him down now, he’s decided to abandon it and do something completely different.  This poem, the 9th in the section, the poem that’s supposed to be the turn is the poet’s declaration that he’s abandoned the structure he loves so much.  That’s the plot of Sonnet 51 and I’ll come back to it later on in the episode.

Hopefully you already listened to the last episode as Sonnets 4.8 and 4.9 are a pair with very similar themes.  As such, I don’t want this episode to be too derivative and, while I’ll reference some of what I discussed last week, I also want to explore new topics.  The biggest idea though is this: if not my interpretation, what else can Sonnets 50 and 51 mean?  On one hand, my claim is that they are full of layered thought and self-referential genius, and on the flip side, history has told us that this poem isn’t worth a second glance.  Well, which is it?  Is this poem junk or is it brilliant?

Personally, when presenting the metasonnets theory, I find myself in a strange place.  I’m literally arguing that Shakespeare is better than we thought, and yet the literary establishment and scholars say, “no, you’re wrong.”  So strange, but this is where we’re at.  It’s bizarre, and yet factually true because I’m the crazy man who says two poems about a horse are some of the most fascinating lines ever composed by the Bard.  Yep, yep, that’s…that’s actually who I am.

So. Okay.  Let’s get started.

The first topic I want to cover is something I should have already, and that’s masculine and feminine pronouns.  Maybe this a boring topic, but I also think it’s very important regardless, and that’s because one of my key claims is that the meta-sonnet structure is referenced endlessly throughout Section 4.  However, to do this, Shakespeare often uses either masculine pronouns or second person pronouns that we assume are to a masculine listener.  At the same time, I claim that the mother of Section 1, the Poet’s mistress in Section 3, and the Dark Lady are all female personifications of the Secret Structure.  At first glance, this might seem problematic.  I mean, how can the Structure be both masculine and feminine?  Can it really be that the Dark Lady of Act 5 is also the horse in Sonnets 50 and 51?  

This is an important question and it certainly sounds a bit modernist.  I fully buy the claim that this idea is too modernist for the Renaissance, and yet I see it being fully supported by the text.  So, it needs to be explored.  In the end, the question must be asked, why is there gender swapping?  How can the female Dark Lady and be the masculine “he” also be the same thing?  This is a fair query to ponder, and it might even maybe me the perfect gotchya to prove me a nutjob.  Without a doubt, I need to answer it, and I hope this explanation that I’m about to give you is sufficient.

First, let’s discuss numbers which is something I like to do on the podcast because the evidence is always interesting.  In this case, let’s explore the frequency of the words quote “her” and “she.”  For this exercise, I am only looking at Acts 2, 3, and 4, also known as Sections 4-9.  This middle portion of the work totals 84 poems.  Out of these 84 sonnets, the word “her” is only used in 5 poems and the word “she” is only used once.  In all but one of the cases, these words appear deep in Act 4, far away from where we are now.  The usages of these feminine pronouns would be fodder for a pretty interesting stand-alone episode, but I don't have time for them here.  Having given that disclaimer, I think all six of these usages refer to the structure and they appear to be earlier sonnets, but that’s not the point for today.

The bigger idea is that, for Acts 1 and 5, feminine pronouns are used a lot and when they are, my suggestion is that they are a reference to the meta-sonnets.  As the listener, you may agree or disagree, and that’s fine.  However, this distribution across the 154 sonnets is rather stark with so many feminine pronouns in the first and last acts and almost none in the middle three.  Therefore, I would ask the simple question: can this be random?  Obviously, the answer could be yes, but I want to explore what it means if it’s intentional.  

And, while I could explain my answer, I’d like to give another question.  Here’s something further for us to contemplate: why is there a gender swap at all?  Why does this happen and what should we make of it?  Honestly, I think the simple answer is that Shakespeare needs to swap genders so that the other interpretations in Act 1 and Act 5 make sense.  In this show, I don’t spend much time explaining the literal interpretation that this work is about the real Shakespeare loving a much younger man, but what would we think if the narrator was simultaneously harping about a woman too?  How could it be that the Bard was feeling true love for two people at the same time?  This would be pretty confusing.  Plus, it’s clear that Shakespeare wanted the work to function on different levels.  

If a reader just wants to read a few love poems, The Sonnets work fine for this.  Or if they want to read the whole story as a narrative, that’s great too.  Lastly, if they want to read the work like we’re doing with the metasonnets, well that’s a completely different experience.  If Shakespeare had been more obvious and never made a secret, The 154 Sonnets, as a whole, would be a very different work.  However, it seems he wanted some secrets and one of the ways he accomplished this was by using almost no feminine pronouns for the middle acts.  This creative decision allows the poet to plant lots of secrets and hide lots of easter eggs.

The next thing I want to point out is that many of these middle act sonnets also lack masculine pronouns.  I haven’t done an exact count, but many of the poems are written in second person.  The poems aren’t addressed to quote “him,” they are for quote: “you,” “thou,” or “thee.”  As such, since second person pronouns have no gender, it’s less clear than we might initially think.  We can assume we know who the second person character is, but that’s just context.  And, you, the listeners of this podcast, know that the answers can be a bit layered.

So, here’s my final question before we get into the poem and it’s one I already gave?  If not my explanation of Section 4: what else is going on?  Again, we basically have two choices.  If someone thinks there is no Secret Structure, then well what is happening in these poems?  I could dwell on this for a while, but the truth is actually pretty sad because the answer is - it actually might not matter.  I hate to sound harsh, but, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: academia has long since examined the poems in Section 4 and, other than three at the end, scholars moved on long ago.  Whatever these sonnets’ merits, if not for being authored by the greatest playwright ever, they would have already disappeared.  As is, they aren’t even part of the active canon.  So, to sort of answer my question.  If Sonnets 51 and 52 aren’t allegorical manifestations of Section 4’s atypical structure, then they are essentially nothing because nobody cares what’s otherwise in the poems.

This is a quick side story, but I want to share it.  My grandfather was the head librarian in a junior college for more than two decades.  Later on, while I was studying literature in university, he and I compared what I was reading with what he had read 60 years early when he was a student.  My grandfather was a prolific reader and to say he read everything wasn’t really an understatement.  During his university career, he basically consumed every major novel of the 1800’s because that was the canon of the 1930’s university catalog.  Fast forward to the early 2000’s, I was assigned to only read roughly 5-10 books from that same period.  The point is - canons change.  It went from my grandfather reading every book by William Makepeace Thackeray to me asking: who is William Makepeace Thackeray?

Taking this back to Shakespeare, it’s safe to assume that some of his works will always be part of the canon of great literature.  The top 5-10 plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth are basically guaranteed a seat at the table for the next 1000 years or so even though, eventually, people will be reading translations like we do with Classic Greek Tragedy, but the stories will endure.  Additionally, 5 to 10 or maybe even 20 sonnets will also make the cut.  Someday, I imagine students living on another planet in another galaxy studying, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” struggling with understanding what a summer’s day on Earth actually is.

Moving on, my point is that most of The Sonnets in Section 4 are considered skippable and forgettable even though I, however, completely disagree.  Using the meta-sonnets as a guide, I have uncovered a really cool story.  So, on one hand, the poems are not worth studying, and yet there’s also something special here.  So, for you as the listener, which side of this argument do you prefer?  Now, it’s possible that my interpretation is flawed, but even still, if secret structure goes mainstream, I imagine future scholars would still use my work as a starting point.  Ultimately, my goal with this season of the podcast is to highlight what history has foolishly overlooked.  If this podcast is successful, Section 4 will be just as famous as many of Shakespeare’s top soliloquies.  It will be part of the canon and poems like Sonnet 51 will be appreciated in a way that no one in the last 400 years would be able to relate to.

Alright, enough sideshow.  Let’s get to the main event.  I’m going to move through this poem quickly and focus on the main idea which is that this is poem is an allegory.  Ok, here’s Sonnet 51 or Sonnet 4.9:

Thus can my love excuse the slow offence

Of my dull bearer when from thee I speed:

From where thou art why should I haste me thence?

Till I return, of posting is no need.

O! what excuse will my poor beast then find,

When swift extremity can seem but slow?

Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind,

In winged speed no motion shall I know,

Then can no horse with my desire keep pace.

Therefore desire, (of perfect'st love being made)

Shall neigh, no dull flesh, in his fiery race;

But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade-

Since from thee going, he went wilful-slow,

Towards thee I'll run, and give him leave to go.

Here is the No Fear Translation: 

This is how my love for you excuses my horse’s slow plod as I journey away from you: “Why should I hurry away from you?” Until I return, there’s no need to rush. But what excuse will my poor horse have for his slowness then, when even the most extreme swiftness will seem slow to me? On the return journey I’d use my spurs even if the animal rode like the wind. Even if my horse had wings I’d feel like we were standing still. No horse could keep up with my desire then. My desire, made of the most perfect love, will race toward you like a horse made of fire, not neigh like a slow, dull horse made of flesh and blood. But, my love, out of love I’ll excuse my horse like this: Since he deliberately went slowly as he was leaving you, I’ll run back to you and forget about the horse altogether.

So, the main idea here is that the horse is slowing down the rider so much that he’s decided to abandon it and go on his own.  This mirrors how most free verse poets feel that rhyme and meter slow them down from expressing themselves.  Seemingly, and in a likewise manner, the narrator felt the same way about the secret five act structure. 

As readers, we need to decide if this is what this poem is about?  Beyond that, I don’t want to really do a super deep dive because I think it’s pretty straight forward.  I would however like to highlight a few things though.

First.  In line two, “when from thee I speed.”  The key word here is quote t-h-e-e “thee.”  That’s a second person pronoun.  However, most of the rest of the poem is in 3rd person.  For sure, we have three characters: the narrator, the horse, and the love.  The horse represents the structure and the love represents the poem.

The second thing is that this is repeated in line 13.  “Since from thee going he went wilful slow.”  The word quote “wilful” suggests that this was all intentional.  The metasonnets and what’s happening in Section 4 – all of this was planned.

Okay, I hope you don’t mind me not going line explaining how a horse is a metaphor for the structure.  I do that in other episodes and I fear it gets boring.

Instead, I want to close by zooming out.  Sonnets 4.8 and 4.9 are the turn.  Up to this point we examined the structure, but the approach has all been about the struggle which led to this moment.  Now, that’s not exactly over, but we’re moving forward.  This is the climax of the section, it’s high point.  The mask off moment.  If readers are unsure of the poet’s intent with Section 4, about why the poem is so weird, all is revealed here.  It’s very easy for a reader to get confused by the strangeness of Section 4’s arrangement.  However, at this exact moment, Shakespeare is telling us that, without a doubt, all of this was intentional.  

Maybe you remember 16232.  Well, this ends the third part.  Our next three poems are treats because Shakespeare is going to explain something special.  Whenever I tell someone about the secret structure, inevitably I get a question: okay fine, but what does this add to the work?  And, well this is a very fair question.  So, rather than give you my hot take, how about we discuss Shakepeare’s opinion?  What does he think about all of this?  So yeah, I’m sure you’d rather hear his thoughts over mine.

Starting next week, we’re going to explore The Bard’s perspective.  Or maybe it’s the narrator’s.  I’m not sure, but we’ll figure it out then.

In the meantime, as a quick reminder, the website for the podcast is www.sonnetspodcast.com and my email is sonnetspodcast@gmail.com.  Thanks for listening.