Comments on Shakespeare Geek: To Me, Fair Friend, You Never Can Be Old

In Bill Bryson's memorable phrase, "Willi...

2009-07-02T13:13:06.027-04:00

In Bill Bryson's memorable phrase, "William Shakespeare was born into a world that was short of people and struggled to keep those it had."

Just look at the lives of playwrights: Thomas Kyd, dead at 35; Robert Greene, 34; George Peele, 40; Thomas Middleton, 47; Christopher Marlowe, 29; Philip Massinger, 57; Francis Beaumont, 32; John Fletcher, 46; William Rowley, 41; John Marston, 57; John Webster, 54; Henry Chettle, 43; John Ford, 54; Cyril Tourneur, 51; and of course, William Shakespeare, 52. Ben Jonson lived to be 65, a ripe old age at the time, and Anthony Munday might have lived into his 70s.

Not even royalty did much better than those depressing numbers; you can really imagine how people would see Providence in Queen Elizabeth living to the age of 70, and ruling for over 40 years.

Reminds me, Craig, of when I interpreted "whe...

2009-07-02T10:26:54.459-04:00

Reminds me, Craig, of when I interpreted "when 40 winters shall besiege thy brow" to mean "40 years from now" and somebody corrected me that it more likely meant "when you are 40 years old." I don't expect too many folks in Shakespeare's day were living up into their 60-70's.

The thing that really strikes me in that poem is t...

2009-07-02T10:18:57.753-04:00

The thing that really strikes me in that poem is that, for Shakespeare, three years is a really substantial slice of a person's life--time enough for beauty to be expected to fade. Theirs was a hard world.

“these (apparently) awkward repetitions in line 2 ...

2009-07-01T23:48:43.722-04:00

“these (apparently) awkward repetitions in line 2 were revealed as the stammering of a lovestruck boy, astonished at this first glimpse of the potential intercourse of love.”'

Although an inventive, technical genius, Larry never was admired for his expertise at versification.
They're all single syllable words-- the whole sentence is. It seems a slowing down, not a speeding up, is what Shakespeare is hearing here. Especially since an actor (or reciter--one and the same to me) wouldn't want to just blow through the "non-subtlety" and pointedness of those three words, given the importance in wordplay they all too apparently deserve.
I think there's more opportunity for euphony in the assonance of the erotic, heated, exhalations of a knowing lover. Pronouncing it becomes a lot easier then.
Congratulations Carl, and much success with your new book!

An excerpt of the commentary from my book on this ...

2009-07-01T22:15:18.886-04:00

An excerpt of the commentary from my book on this poem:
'Here we have another self-rebutting sonnet. In the first two quatrains the speaker claims that the youth’s beauty has not faded, but in the third quatrain that he may, after all, be deceived. In the couplet, he declares that, in case this is so, he must inform the future that his friend was the paragon of beauty. Some commentators take this sonnet’s time span literally, inferring that it was written three years after the speaker met the beloved. However, LEE (1907) remarks, “The period seems to have been more or less conventional among the sonneteers,” citing several instances.
Booth comments on “your eye I eyde” (line 2): “The wit of the construction can never have been subtle, but it is now unfortunately made gross and puerile by the semantic strain a modern reader must feel in the use of ‘eye’ as a general synonym for ‘see’ or ‘gaze upon.’” He notes “the comparatively graceful triple pun by which Shakespeare achieved a clause in which grammatical object, subject, and verb are all expressed in one sound.” In addition to lacking subtlety, the phrase is difficult to pronounce euphoniously. However, Vendler notes that in Laurence Olivier’s recitation of this poem to Katherine Hepburn (in the television movie Love Among the Ruins, 1975), “these (apparently) awkward repetitions in line 2 were revealed as the stammering of a lovestruck boy, astonished at this first glimpse of the potential intercourse of love.”'

Here's something to contemplate. original spel...

2009-07-01T22:04:56.193-04:00

Here's something to contemplate.
original spellings:

For as you were when first your eye I eyde,

The word eyde (now spelled 'eyed', with only one meaning usually inferred e.g.--to look, see, let sight fall on, etc.) is also an adjective, meaning having eyes--and not necessarily only two, but one or more, and can also be used as a verb--to eye (not as in sight)--the past tense of which would be 'eyed'--which if intentionally spelled differently here to note a particular intent or action, having 'eyde; it could mean writing a dotted 'i', or, as 'eye' can also be a noun meaning aperture, as in the round lens of a camera or anything that opens similarly, eyde could also be taken to mean to have literally "opened (eyde) the eye of the eye that was eyde (eyed)"--the possibilities are a little confusing, as well as maybe a little "eye-opening", to say the least. :))