Fourteen Lines

A promise is a promise, made, in my case, not to be broken but to be kept. I promised myself I would attempt a slim volume of Shakespeare's Sonnets – all 154 of them and just them alone i.e. with no explanatory notes or commentary – and so I did, though I can't say I made much much headway. I reaped their beauty in part and not in full, as of course like everything I read, no matter what it is, i.e. in which particular field it might be classified, I read as it if these were a novel or an epic poem with a narrative thread running through, when naturally these sonnets have no such link, other than being arranged, so I understood from the preface, according to some system the author proscribed i.e. not in the order they were written, which to his mind formed a natural following on.
Why I persist in treating all reading material in such a manner is a separate question to which I do not have a complete answer, only that I cannot pick up and put down a book and pick up another. One must be read and finished with, and another picked up when the other is still being digested. I cannot, I will not share my focus or attention with more than one, so if slim or of less content my pace might naturally quicken. Plays and verse really do come worse off in this regard, for what benefit do I hope to gain from them when I cannot seem to take my time? There is some, but the little I gather will in time be forgotten. However, a habit is a habit and reading ones, long practised, are hard to undo or trick. The heart or the eye won't be deceived, and together refuse to let the mind be made a conquest of. The heart will encourage the eye to speed - read on!
So, I read and reap what I can.
The preface by Katherine Duncan-Jones had also explained what I was to expect from these sonnets of Shakespeare, for it appears, like Lucan with epic poetry, here, he parted from tradition, in that his sonnets concern not just love but reflections on time and the ageing process, and not all are addressed to a lady but to a young man, probably of high rank. (Ahhhh, now I begin to appreciate Daphne's du Maurier's interest, as well as her thesis that the Bacon brothers may have been involved in their composition. Indeed, men in that age seem to have, and often profess, great feeling for their fellows, so much so that to our eyes now they almost seem gender-fluid.) Shakespeare's Sonnets for this reason were not as praised, as they are in our age, as they were considered damaging to his reputation. The opinion for a long time holding that surely he cannot have wanted his heart to have been so unlocked.
Was it however his heart he was unlocking, or was it his skills of observation? Was he merely trying to show same-sex love exists? And that love is in the eye of the beholder i.e. beauty or grace or faithfulness is not a prerequisite to the condition? And that love too is disappointment and betrayal, and that Time and Age also play their part? Lovers, whatever the circumstances of their love, have doubts. They are either a slave to it or at war with it; praising it or decrying its nature. Time and Age can decay; Youth, the remembrance of, inspires or consoles. And Desire is a Fool's glutton, because one look, or the hope of, (from the object of his admiration) will make him happy. Love, in these instances, is not fixed i.e. guaranteed to be returned or if reciprocated to last. Wasn't Shakespeare then a student of Truism? This is how Love is. This is how Time and Age can be proof of constant or inconstant love.
Many since – poets and writers - in different forms have dressed these old words in new, though there is no need to, for Shakespeare has, in succinct terms, said it all.

Picture credit: Two Cupids with Red Drapery, Honore Daumier (source: WikiArt).

Developed from a journal entry, February 2021.