Sonnet 2

Welcome back! First, allow me to attempt to sidestep the various editors’ attempts to make our poem intelligible and present Sonnet 2 in a form as close to what Shakespeare may have written. In modern editions I have, for example, line four yields both “tottered” and “tatter’d” (yes, in the end they mean the same thing). But let’s go with the kooky spellings and archaic punctuation.

When fortie Winters shall besiege thy brow,
And digge deep trenches in thy beauties field,
Thy youthes proud livery, so gaz’d on now,
Wil be a totter'd weed, of smal worth held:
Then being askt, where all thy beautie lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty daies;
To say within thine owne deepe sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftlesse praise.
How much more praise deserv’d thy beauties use,
If thou couldst answere this faire child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse
Prooving his beautie by succession thine.
This were to be new made when thou art ould,
And see thy blood warme when thou feel'st it could.

This may seem banal, but I’m fascinated how Shakespeare manages to get double-duty out of so many of his images. In the first quatrain, he has set up a pair of oppositions – youth and age, livery and weeds. The latter word means “clothes” (Orsino tells Viola “let me see thee in thy woman’s weeds” in Twelfth Night), but it also reconnects us to “beauties field” (flowers?) from line 2, bridging the two images. Very cool.

What do you think of the other oppositions that emerge – shame and praise, thriftlessness and profit (“the treasure of thy lusty daies”), warmth and cold – and what can we say about Shakespeare’s use of the technique as an argumentative mode?

One more image to consider: beauty. Shakespeare uses the word four times. Is that all that’s being preserved here?

Is it too early to consider the poem’s place in the (admittedly artificial) sequence? Chris mentioned “economic transactions” in Sonnet 1. I might shift that category to “middle-class-ness” and ask if all the “treasure” and “thriftlesse” talk and the summing of accounts don’t betray the roots of a man raised in merchant weeds. Amber? What would Greenblatt say? And where does the concept of “succession” fit in?

Finally, this poem clearly iterates the theme of Sonnet 1 – the perpetuation of self through offspring. How does Sonnet 2 differ from Sonnet 1? And if you were the object of both poems’ admonishments, which would convince you more?

Randall