Love, Fault and Imperfection (аналіз сонет Шекспіра)

Shakespeare’s Sonnets are as popular as misunderstood. Though they had been published in 1609, in Shakespeare’s lifetime, it was most likely a pirated edition, and they were never republished until the late 17th century, when a certain compiler issued a collection of wildly distorted Shakespearean poems. He felt it was possible even to cut two of three sonnets in pieces and merge them together. This led to many misconceptions about the nature of the Sonnets, which survived well into the 19th and 20th century even after the true texts had been discovered.

One of those misconceptions is that all or most of the Sonnets are love poems addressed to a woman. This idea had infl uenced the Russian translations by Nicolas Gerbel and Samuel Marshak who made Shakespeare address a woman where in fact he addressed a man. Actually, only 26 out of 154 sonnets address a ‘Dark Lady’ whose identity is unknown. Two of the rest are purely allegorical, and 126 are dedicated to a ‘Fair Friend’ – a young man of noble birth. The ‘Fair Friend’ could conceivably be either Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare had dedicated his two narrative poems earlier, or William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and a nephew of Philip Sydney.

The discovery that the addressee of most sonnets was in fact male was shocking and led to another misconception – about Shakespeare’s perversion. However, nothing indicates that Shakespeare was interested in other men: all we know about his personal relations is that he was married, had children by his wife and once had an affair with one of his female fans. Besides, in Sonnets 1–17 Shakespeare persuades his ‘Fair Friend’ to get married. What misleads a modern reader is the highly emotional tone of the ‘Fair Friend’ sonnets and the use of the word ‘love’. In fact, there was nothing abnormal in such expression of feelings in Medieval and Renaissance culture, and affection did not necessarily mean sexual feelings. ‘Love’ was often used for ‘friendship’ until the 18th century. People just used to be more emotionally open than we are (consider the writings of Karamzin and Radishchev).

What is actually astonishing about the Sonnets is their general idea. Since the time of Petrarch (1304–1374), it had been commonly assumed that the addressee of a sonnet should be represented as perfect by nature. A sonnet meant praise. But it is imperfection of his characters that Shakespeare lays stress upon. While it is widely known that the ‘Dark Lady’ has imperfect looks (Sonnet 130, ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun’), it is even more important that both she and ‘Fair Friend’ are imperfect morally. Sometimes Shakespeare becomes really preoccupied with their faults. Unlike earlier sonnet writers, he does not claim that he took to these two people because they were perfect – his affection is deeply personal, and the imperfections of his friend and mistress is what makes his feelings human.