When forty winters shall besiege thy brow… A common complaint among those forced to study Shakespeare is, “Well why didn’t he just say that? Why does it have to be so complicated / use so many words / say things backward…?’” I thought I’d pick one of my favorite examples, shown above.  This is the opening line to Sonnet #2.  Like many of the other sonnets, the “procreation” ones especially, sonnet 2 offers a glimpse into the future. Any random future?  No, a very specific one – 40 years from now.  Sure, Shakespeare could have said “Some day”, and there are probably a whole bunch of “modern translations” of the sonnets that say exactly that.  But he doesn’t say it like that, does he?  Imagine a job interview or a high school guidance counselor asking you, “Where do you see yourself in the future?”   Typically they don’t.  They ask, “Where do you see yourself in 10 years?”  By putting a real number up there, Shakespeare puts the future within the reader’s grasp.  Each person can imagine for themselves what life will be like in 40 years. Wait, it gets better.  Shakespeare didn’t even say “years”, did he?  After all, what’s a year?  Draw me one.  How does a year feel?  Instead he said winter.  That make a better image in your head?  I bet you could draw winter.  What’s winter feel like?  Shakespeare’s not out there sledding and making snowmen, folks.  Winter is long and cold and desolate, and you’ll be lucky to survive to see spring.  If we’re talking strictly about telling time he could just as easily have said forty summers or forty autumns, but this is why the man’s a poet.  He’s painting a picture in only a handful of words.  His point is still the same – 40 years from now.  But do you start to see how he makes it look?  If you’re an old man looking back on 40 summers you’re looking back on happy memories.  40 winters makes you think “Wow, what a long hard road that’s been.” He’s not done, oh no.  Not by a long shot.  What exactly is that winter doing?  Just coming and going, one year after the next?  Time just passing you by?  “When forty winters have gone by”?  Far from it.  You have to love the word he picks here – besiege.  Do you know what that means?  It means to attack, to wage war upon.  Besieging is what the barbarian hordes do to the castle.  More illustratively it means a never-ending, relentless attack.  In a word, Shakespeare’s managed to take this sonnet from  a still life painting of falling snow to an ongoing war, you against Time itself (in other sonnets referred to as “the guy with the scythe”). What’s the battleground for this war?  Where is Time doing its worst?  Here’s where it gets personal.  This is not a hypothetical “you against the guy with the scythe” argument, Shakespeare got a point. Time is going to play out this battle on your face, son!   What do you think happens when you get old?  You won’t be as pretty then as  you are now, let me tell you. And that, ultimately, is the point. As the story of the procreation sonnets goes, you’ve got this young and handsome guy who is so busy enjoying his life that he doesn’t have time to settle down, get married and have kids.  So where do you hit him?  In his vanity.  “Dude, see how handsome you are now?  I’ve got news for you, you’re not going to look so pretty after 40 years.  Think about it.”  Once you’ve got his attention, then you can deliver the “you should have kids, because they’ll look just like you and everybody will still appreciate how handsome you were” argument.  (Compare this logic to that of sonnet 12 where he takes a very different approach, talking about how flowers get all withered up as they get old.  Here he doesn’t talk about what happens to people in general, he comes right out in this first line and says *thy* brow.  You.  When *you* get old.) As I write this, the analysis next to the original says:  “Forty years from now when your brow is wrinkled with age.”  There’s nothing *wrong* with that.  It tells you the point, if you needed it.  But hopefully I can at least give you a glimpse at what you’re missing, and why exactly Shakespeare chooses the words he does.

http://www.bacongeek.com You people have no idea how many emails I get about Authorship questions.  I feel bad calling them all loonies – after all, most of them want to get into a deep conversation on the subject and honestly I don’t have nearly enough knowledge to debate it.  Quite frankly some of them make a compelling case. So I’m happy to announce that I’ve set up a new site to deal with that whole issue, and just basically get it off our plates altogether (and to give me a place to learn more about the subject).  And who better to symbolize the Authorship question than Sir Francis Bacon himself?  After all, it was Delia Bacon (no relation) who originally asked the question, and suggested Sir Francis as the author.  I thought it a fitting tribute. On the new site I will do my best to pay equal time to all of the authorship theories, not just Bacon.  Feel free to stop by, no matter your opinion on who wrote what.  Try to keep an open mind, huh?  I know I will.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/5083884/Dogs-to-audition-for-Shakespeare-play-Taming-of-the-Shrew.html Who was it that said to never act with dogs or children?  This Taming of the Shrew director never heard that, and is auditioning real dogs for a scene in Act IV where Petruchio asks for a spaniel, only to be brought a different breed of dog. P.S. I’m very very sorry for the pun.  😉

http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/333/ Many people on Twitter today are throwing around this quote, calling it Shakespeare:

He that is thy friend indeed,
He will help thee in thy need:

That does not feel right to me, and it took me awhile to find it.  It is actually, as you may have guessed, from The Passionate Pilgrim:

XXI.

As it fell upon a day
In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a grove of myrtles made,
Beasts did leap, and birds did sing,
Trees did grow, and plants did spring;
Every thing did banish moan,
Save the nightingale alone:
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Lean'd her breast up-till a thorn
And there sung the dolefull'st ditty,
That to hear it was great pity:
'Fie, fie, fie,' now would she cry;
'Tereu, tereu!' by and by;
That to hear her so complain,
Scarce I could from tears refrain;
For her griefs, so lively shown,
Made me think upon mine own.
Ah, thought I, thou mourn'st in vain!
None takes pity on thy pain:
Senseless trees they cannot hear thee;
Ruthless beasts they will not cheer thee:
King Pandion he is dead;
All thy friends are lapp'd in lead;
All thy fellow birds do sing,
Careless of thy sorrowing.
Even so, poor bird, like thee,
None alive will pity me.
Whilst as fickle Fortune smiled,
Thou and I were both beguiled.
Every one that flatters thee
Is no friend in misery.
Words are easy, like the wind;
Faithful friends are hard to find:
Every man will be thy friend
Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend;
But if store of crowns be scant,
No man will supply thy want.
If that one be prodigal,
Bountiful they will him call,
And with such-like flattering,
'Pity but he were a king;'
If he be addict to vice,
Quickly him they will entice;
If to women he be bent,
They have at commandement:
But if Fortune once do frown,
Then farewell his great renown
They that fawn'd on him before
Use his company no more.
He that is thy friend indeed,
He will help thee in thy need:
If thou sorrow, he will weep;
If thou wake, he cannot sleep;
Thus of every grief in heart
He with thee doth bear a part.
These are certain signs to know
Faithful friend from flattering foe.

It still doesn’t feel right to me.  Notice the comment in the link, that Shakespeare is only identified as the author of several of the poems – and 21 is not one of them.  What do you think?  Does this one sound right to you?

I’m intrigued by what Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet has to say on the topic (a blog that takes itself and it’s research very seriously):

The Passionate Pilgrim was first published in 1599, on the sly, as it were, by the disreputable (though later, thanks to his role in producing the First Folio famous) William Jaggard.  The Passionate Pilgrim is a collection of 20 poems, represented on its title page to be the work of W. Shakespeare.  In fact, only five of the poems are the work of Shakespeare, the first, an early version of sonnet 138 ("When my love swears that she is made of truth"), the second, sonnet 144 ("Two loves I have of comfort and despair"), and the next three lifted from Love’s Labour’s Lost, written and placed in that play to be intentionally bad sonnets, as Shapiro points out.  The rest of the poems in Pilgrim are by minor Elizabethan authors, except for poem 19 which is a corrupt version of Marlowe’s The Passionate Shepherd to His Love followed by an answering stanza by Sir Walter Raleigh.

Emphasis mine.  So, most likely not Shakespeare at all?