In this a series of weekly essays on "Shakespeare's Prosody" I have attempted to correct, revise and make articulate to the modern mind the content and structure of the Sonnets, as well as some of the poetry attributed to W.S. I confess when reading these the inherent meaning is either absent or lost due to the antiquated syntax, use of extant words and the overall poetic mode or mood associated with the Elizabethan Renaissance. These anomalies I have attempted to correct and revise so that the meaning is more readily available to the modern reader and indeed the modern mind. In many instances these have been minor, in others more significant. In particular I found Sonnet #60 to have major faults or errors, for example in the opening line:

“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore”.

Strictly speaking it contains an extra syllable which technically some analysts have judged that the word “towards” is actually monosyllabic ie: t’wards, although it is written as a bi-syllabic word which to the layman is confusing or ambiguous. According to the “Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory” (Penguin Press, J.A. Cudden 1976) it is defined as being hypercatalectic (often called a “catch”) that it contains an unstressed syllable. Many other words that are apostrophised such as for example “eraz’d” I have corrected as “erased” for ease of reading. Many other words such as say “contest’st” I was obliged to leave alone without any appreciable or feasible correction. However, in Sonnet #60 (which numerically is synonymous with 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour etc) I have been obliged to re-write entire lines in a form more relevant and meaningful to draw out the actual meaning or intention of the poet. Similar references to numbers can be found in Spenser’s “Amoretti”. The words “make towards” in the first line are in my view rather clumsy since W.S. clearly emulated Arthur Golding’s own translation from Ovid’s Metamorphoses which describe the movement of the waves analogous to the passage of time and technically how waves as they roll towards the shoreline succeed each other, simultaneously pushing backwards and rolling forwards. Spoken by Pythagoras it proceeds as follows:

“In all the world there is not that that standeth at a stay. Things ebb and flow: and every shape is made to pass away. The time itself continually is fleeting like a brook nor lightsome time can tarry still. But look as every wave drives other forth, and that that comes behind both thrusteth and is thrust itself: even the times by kind.”

This philosophical sentiment is also found in the aphorism; “No man can step in the same river twice”. Now, if anyone who has watched this phenomenon and I have personally on Chesil beach in Dorset will appreciate it is a difficult thing to describe, especially in 14 lines of poetry and still exact its’ subtle meaning. However, I was curious to see how this could be arranged in the form of iambic pentameters. The poet could have substituted any number of adjectival words to fully describe the sequential crashing of waves, their assault onto a pebbled beach for example:

Like as the waves assault the shingled shore,

Like as the waves bombard the tattered shore,

Like as the waves o’erwhelm the passive shore,

Like as the waves erode the solemn shore,

Like as the waves engulf the temporal shore,

Like as the waves molest the weed-strewn shore,

In my view any one of the above would have been more descriptive and relevant that the use of “make towards” or “pebbled” and thereby avoiding the extra syllable which is rather clumsy and inadequate. The whole issue of tidal thrust or perpetuity of flow is not adequately expressed and fails miserably in describing the dynamic movement found in waves. Why Shakespeare chose the term “make towards” to me is a mystery. Furthermore, the use of the word “Nativity”, while understandable in an astrological sense would in a modern contextual association make an indirect allusion to the Biblical story of Christ’s birth or bring to mind; “being born of the ocean”. The question is was that the poet’s intention? I have substituted it with the word “Emerging”, which fully describing the action of the waves does not connote any element of Christianisation. After all in many countries throughout the world we live in a multi-faceted religious social dimension which includes, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and even Pagans and Humanists.

It would appear that given these, perhaps unconscious errors or decisions being were made by the poet, who was perhaps working furiously on other projects at the same time, were to a large extent unintentional. In any case they were highly personal and not in any sense intended for public consumption as were Venus & Adonis and Lucrece.  The Sonnets were not print-ready and did not receive the scrutiny afforded other poems prepared for publication. It must be pointed out that the demands of playwriting were enormous as plays had to be composed under a great deal of pressure and in a short period of time in order to fulfil the demands of both public and court audiences eager for the next extravagant melodrama. It appears to me that Edward de Vere might have used the Sonnets sequence as a type of personal, poetic diary recording his own personal experiences and at the same time experimenting with forms that might, in the course of time, be transposed into his own or other playwright’s dramas. This has indeed already been ascertained by many academics and researchers in their analysis discovering many passages in the Sonnets that have similar or identical echoes in Shakespeare’s plays. To that extent the Sonnets constitute the fundamental “spine” on which the plays radiate out as limbs or branches as analogously in the human ribcage. Here is my revised version of Shakespeare's Sonnet #60:

 

Just as the waves assail the shingled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to hour’s end;

Exchanging stature with each one before,

In those sequential moments to contend.

Emerging slowly from the ocean’s bright,

Evolving to its’ apogee being crowned,

Thrusts forth its’ potency in one last fight,

And Time that gives doth now his gift confound.

Time doth impale the flourish set on youth

And ploughs the lines in beauty's brow,

Devouring rarities of nature's truth,

Then naught endures but for his scythe to mow:

And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand

To praise thy worth, despite Time's cruel hand.