Shakespeare Had No Part in the Publication of His 1609 Sonnets

Photo: Title page of the 1609 Sonnets, from its Wikipedia page.

Clinton Heylin's So Long As Men Can Breathe: The Untold Story of Shakespeare's Sonnets is a very quick and interesting read about Shakespeare's unauthorized (according to the author--and I agree with him) 1609 Sonnets.  He deals with the times very well, and with the publishers, printers and other authors of the time, too.  He tackles a lot of issues, a lot of theories, and a lot of the works of other critics, both old and current (including current literary critic Katherine Duncan-Jones, who he criticizes so brusquely, so often, and with such glee, that it seems personal), and does so with a breezy writing style and a lot of his own research and proof.  He writes more about how many critics are wrong about something (especially the fore-mentioned Duncan-Jones) than he does about what he's right about, but finally he takes a stand about why he thinks Shakespeare played no part in the publication of his sonnets in 1609. 

I don't like the method in which he does this, however.  He essentially summarizes the thoughts about a topic, then writes about what literary critics throughout the ages have written about that topic, then writes about why he thinks they're wrong about what they've written (again, especially Duncan-Jones, who he really seems to dislike personally), and then--and only then--writes about what he believes is correct, and why.

However, at that point, he states his case well, and the reader has a thorough understanding of the idea, the history of the idea, all the people surrounding that idea, what the critics have written about that idea, and finally what he thinks about that idea.  When you're done, you feel as if you've learned something, and you feel like you've just read from an authority, which I suppose you have.

And so to take it from there, listed below are my reasons for why I believe Shakespeare had no part in the 1609 publication of his sonnets.  If I can toot my own horn here a moment, I'll point out that I wrote all of these down after I read up to page 91, and that Heylin only writes about a couple of them.  The rest--for better or for worse--are all mine.

I believe that Shakespeare did not approve of, or participate in, the publication of his Sonnets because:

--He was in semi-retirement by 1609, rather late in the game to publish a book of sonnets.  Such a thing would've been done to jump-start a career at that time, not end one.  Shakespeare would be fully retired just four years after its publication.  He'd be dead within seven years of its publication.

--The sonnet fad had petered out in London by the late-1590s.  Shakespeare was a follower of fads; his thumb was very much on the pulse of his public.  He would not have published something a decade out of fashion.  If he'd wanted them published at all, he would have published all 154 of them by 1595.

--By the end of the 154 sonnets, he was clearly tired of them as a mode of expression.  Shakespeare was forever changing his writing styles, so much so that by 1609, his Problem Plays showed a roving creative mind that was at odds as to how it wanted to express itself.  By 1609, Tempest-time, he was WAY over the sonnets as a mode of expression.

--Though he embedded sonnets into his plays throughout his career, he last used them in his plays with seriousness of presentation in Romeo and Juliet, in roughly 1593.

--The Sonnets have a very (infamously) questionable Dedication that speaks more of its publisher and procurer than it does of its writer.  Or of Pembroke, or of Wriothesley, or of whomever.

--By 1609, the leading dramatist of London, a part-owner of the Globe, a very wealthy man and a very esteemed Gentleman, owner of two huge homes and two large tracts of land, and the favorite of all of the King's Men to the King himself, had no need at all of a sponsor, of an Earl of Anything, to support him, or to sponsor his writings.  But he would have in 1593, though not any later than that.  And he would not finish writing something by 1595 and wait until 1609 to publish them--if he wanted to publish them at all.

--In 1593, sonnets were hot; in 1609, they were not.  Shakespeare, who was very good at making money, at striking while the iron was hot, would've published all 154 of his sonnets--if he'd wanted to publish them at all--by 1595, in order to make as much money as possible from them.  Though a huge name by 1609, his sonnets would not have been, and indeed were not, a bestseller.  He would know that.  Though not one to turn away from money, he would not have needed it badly enough by 1609 to publish these sonnets.  But Thomas Thorpe was that desperately in need.  How did he procure these sonnets if Shakespeare didn't give them to him?  Nobody knows.  But they did not know each other well.  Thorpe was not amongst his friends.

--We're taught that the Sonnets, when combined, create a storyline created by three large groupings of them.  An older, wiser man urges a younger man, whom he obviously loves, and fantasizes about, and whom he is possibly having a relationship with, to procreate so that he can live forever (though the narrator insists that his art of writing will do this for the younger man as well); a convoluted affair between the younger man, the narrator, and a "dark lady," creates anguish for the narrator; the "dark lady" and the younger man leave the narrator stewing in his own bitterness and lust.

This is actually not the case.  There's no connected storyline here.  The three groupings are not seamlessly connected.  In fact, quite often, back-to-back sonnets are not connected.  Shakespeare would not have published them like this, in these groupings.  They are three distinct groups, one not having to do with the other.  And I'm not even convinced that there are three groupings here.  I'd bet that Thorpe put this together more than I would that Shakespeare did.

--Sonnets 1-17 strike me as a group of sonnets that a 1590s Shakespeare would have been hired to write so that whomever hired him could deliver them to the Earl of Pembroke, who slept around a lot, never wanted to marry, ignored his Queen's urging to marry specific women, who was apparently super-handsome and beloved by all (if you know what I'm sayin') and who finally married, though not happily, nor exclusively, by 1608.  It was a common practice for writers to get paid to write such things, as well as elegies, eulogies, songs for others' plays, etc.

--Shakespeare was also not one to beat a dead horse, or to repeat something over and over without even the slightest of thematic change.  Yet all sonnets 1-17 say is: "Give birth so you don't die," and nothing more.

--Shakespeare was a hugely profitable and popular writer by 1609.  He would not have given any writing to Thomas Thorpe, who already had one foot in bankruptcy and the other in ineptitude.  His writing would've gone to the best publisher and bookseller (as one was commonly both) in London.

--The Sonnets are infamously uneven.  Some are eternal masterpieces.  But #145 is clearly an earlier sophomoric, badly-conceived, melodramatic, juvenile effort, probably written for Anne Hathaway (as her name is punned within it) before they were married, when Shakespeare was about 19.  By 1609, at age 45, he would have blanched to see it in print, for all of super-critical London to see.  This would be like me seeing my high school stories in print.

--The Sonnets, as I mentioned, do not have an arrangement that Shakespeare would have devised.  The last two sonnets, called the "Cupid Sonnets," have nothing at all to do with the previous 152 sonnets.  Numbers 29 and 30 are clearly companion pieces, mirror-images of each other.  But #129 is a bitter and violent purge of self-hatred and regret, about a narrator who lusts uncontrollably for a "dark lady," and is in a self-created Hell because of it.  #130 is an amusing over-exaggeration of a woman's physical imperfections, too numerous to be taken seriously, the point being that their love is special because it's not based on a superficial physicality.  In other words, there's no lust involved.  These simply do not go together.  The genius who intertwined the complexities of the double-plot of King Lear, and who combined pitch-perfect self-examination with a revenge plot in Hamlet, did not put these sonnets together.

--#126, alone of all 154, are six pairs of rhyming couplets--12 lines, not 14--and therefore also does not have the same rhyme scheme as the others.  It's a well-written experiment, not meant to be included with all the rest.  #99 has 15 lines, not 14, as line 5 is extraneous.  Further proof that the Sonnets were published without Shakespeare's supervision--and certainly without his approval.

These are the reasons why I believe that Shakespeare played no part in the 1609 publication of his sonnets.

Re-Claiming My House and Land

So now I bring your attention to http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com.  This is a website, also a little old and I don't know when it was last updated, about a guy who essentially is like the MacGyver we all want to be in, and around, our own homes.  He has gardens that could apparently feed a small army.  He makes awesome-looking wall shelves out of old desk parts--and these shelves have great-looking and handy drawers, too!  He uses types of paints I've never heard of, and he uses metal pieces to kill weeds in his gardens.  He makes his own honey and jams and things, and he only uses a stove to heat his house.  He sort of comes across as a survivalist, big-government hating kind of guy, but whatever--the point is that he knows how to really take care of his home and land.

Now, I'm never going to be this guy, and aspiring to be this guy is useless.  I'm just not that handy.  But after viewing his site, I decided that I needed to take control of my own home and land.  He has his son (maybe sons) and his wife to help him, and I don't, but I can still do some things.  And, believe me, some things need to be done.

So the first thing I wanted to tackle today, in the second straight day of 95+ degree heat, is clearing away this nice shed/patio area I have (basically it's a much smaller version of my house).  This thing has a large-ish storage shed, with electricity and plug outlets, no less, and a large sitting area that's completely in the shade, with blinds that I could maybe use, but that also may be a bit of an eyesore.  We'll have to see about those.

Anyway, I used to sit in this area and a) watch my father work very hard; b) watch gales or hurricanes; and c) drink a beer with my father after I'd exhausted myself sitting in the shade watching him work very hard.  When I bought this place after he died, I would sit in the same area, on comfortable chairs, and just kind of chill.  Which I don't do very often.  I guess I would also reminisce, and read a little, and enjoy the outside.  It's as country as I get.

But now I can't do that.  For some reason, I thought it would be wise to store large, and small, pieces of wood against the stone wall in the back.  This ended up taking more room than I thought it would, and I also now have to walk through the entire area, which is also full of other things, to get to this wood, which is now inconvenient, which defeats the whole purpose.  (Though the wood was kept dry over the winter, without having to cover it.)  For some reason, a mostly-hollow door also found its way to this porch area connected to the shed, and there's a grill there, and boxes and barrels of kindling and smaller pieces of wood and sticks, and some broom handles, and lots of plastic barrels, and...and beside this shed is another area of wood--a pallet that is now empty because I used up all the wood that was on it, and a box-spring from a neighbor that I have flipped over and stored more pieces of wood, of various shapes, sizes, and thickness.  (I have a little bit of a wood/fireplace/firepit problem.)  So now I can't get into the sitting area, and the land between this area and the fence is crowded with a pallet and a box-spring of wood.  And, oh yeah, I also have a very old glider, with no cushions (though the thing still works very well, I think, but I wouldn't ever sit on it again), that has some very old wood on it--wood that goes back to when my father was still alive, when he would pile his wood on that.  (My father would jury-rig things like that all the time.)

That whole part of my backyard, in short, is a mess.  And I also have wood stacked haphazardly on the other side of the fence, on my side-yard.

Now this is obviously a multi-day, perhaps multi-week task.  What to do first?

Well, here's where I impressed myself with my slight MacGyver-ism.  I took this door, and I quickly but carefully tore off all the cheap, weak plywood, or whatever it is, and I broke that up into little pieces to use for the firepit.  (I told you, I have a firepit, firewood problem.)  I also took off most of the round cardboard thingies on the inside, and I threw that into the same barrel for the same purpose.  These will make good kindling.  (The barrel is weakening on the bottom, so I'm not using one of the good ones for this.  And it's just for storage, so I'm not worrying too much about moving the thing and having the bottom fall out on me.)  Then I noticed that some of the nails I took out to do this were really good, long, strong nails.  So I took these, and I hammered them into the wooden boards of the lower walkway in the backyard, as these pieces were coming loose because the wood had warped, or the screws and nails in it already had given way (Yes, screws and nails; as I mentioned, my father would jury-rig things--but they always worked when he did!), or whatever.

So the point here is that by tearing up this door, I a) re-used the plywood, or the wood panel, or whatever, and the round cardboard thingies for the firepit, so there was no waste or more junk for the landfill; b) I re-used the nails as needed for my wooden walkway; and c) I'm going to re-use the solid, good pieces of wood of the door for other projects around the land, as the wood is still good; and d) I'll re-use the wood I can't use for other projects by burning it in the firepit or fireplace.  And I cleared some much-needed space off the shed patio, so I can sit and reminisce again about how I used to exhaust myself watching my father work very hard!

And now there's only a dozen more hours of work to do there before I can really relax there again, as opposed to the fourteen or fifteen total hours that there had been.  I also spent some time in the sun--with constant breaks for water and central air; we're not stupid here.  Well, not all the time--and I exercised, got a tan (or a slight burn?), and enjoyed working on my own land to try and re-claim it.

Not the Deliberate Agrarian, maybe, but not bad--for me.  And I will put a garden around here, too.