Shakespeare

Just like the movies of today smuggled into this country as promotion tapes to satisfy the intellectual craving of the few film-lovers, the sonnets of Shakespeare were first published as a pirate edition in 1609. By that time, many had already known them, and admired their sweet and silver language. Today, the sonnets are second to Hamlet only in terms of the amount of criticism written about them. No one is sure, however, of real person whose cryptic initials W.H. are placed in the dedication.The brilliant Oscar Wilde suggested his version in another 'portrait' of his, The Portrait of W.H.:

"Who was that young man of Shakespeare's day who, without being of noble birth or even of noble nature, was addressed by him in terms of such passionate adoration that we can but wonder at the strange worship, and are almost afraid to turn the key that unlocks the mystery of the poet's heart? Who was he whose physical beauty was such that it became the corner-stone of Shakespeare's art; the very source of Shakespeare's inspiration; the very incarnation of Shakespeare's dreams? To look upon him as simply the object of certain love-poems is to miss the whole meaning of the poems: for the art of which Shakespeare talks in the Sonnets is not the art of the Sonnets themselves, which indeed were to him but slight and secret things − it is acceptance not so much on demonstrable the art of the dramatist to which he is always alluding; and he to whom Shakespeare (…) promised immortality (…) was surely none other than the boy-actor for whom he created Viola and Imogen, Juliet and Rosalind, Portia and Desdemona, and Cleopatra herself. This was Cyril Graham's theory, evolved as you see purely from the Sonnets themselves, and depending for itsproof or formal evidence, but on a kind of a spiritual and artistic sense, by which alone he claimed could the true meaning of the poems be discerned."

In fact, it is much more likely that the young handsome friend of the Sonnet s is an aristocrat rather that a humble actor. Yet the enigmatic prototypes' mystery is not the chief attraction of the Sonnets. The poems' charm lies in another department. They are simply beautifully written and decorously ornamented with metaphor.

Take the very beginning of the cycle, the first seventeen sonnets, all of which are sweet persuasions: the young friend should marry to save his beauty from oblivion passing it on his heirs. In Sonnet One, the beauty is compared with ripe harvest. In Sonnet Two the forty winters are predicted to dig deep trenches in the beauty's field, his visage. In Sonnet Four, the young man is compared to a profitless usurer that has so great a sum of sums, which is wasted. At times, Shakespeare's language is deliberately simple so the Sonnets' message is much more effectively conveyed.

Women's beauty also had its share of praise in the Sonnets. Most of the Renaissance poets were keen on idealizing, if not idolizing their dames. The prevailing poetry of the period was of the following sort compiled from stock imagery and hackneyed epithets of the day.

My lady's hair is threads of beaten gold,

Her front the purest crystal eye hath seen,

Her eyes the brightest stars the heavens hold,

Her cheeks red roses such as seld have been;

Her pretty lips of red vermillion dye,

Her blush Aurora on the morning sky, etc., etc.,etc.

But there comes Shakespeare, and in one of his sonnets says he something outrageously different:

My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun…

Obviously, that sonnet is nothing but open attack on everything in the poetry of the period that was lifeless, all-too-literary and lacking in real feeling. Scholars showed that Sonnet 130, for instance, is one entire anti-stereotype description of the beloved and a parody on a sonnet written in 1582 by the poet Thomas Watson. Just you hear the case, Watson versus Shakespeare:

Her sparkling eyes in heav'n a place deserve

(Definitely not: My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun)

Her yellow lock exceed the beaten gold

(No, all wrong: If hears be wires, black wires grow on her head)

Her words are music all of silver sound

(Let's not be silly: I love to hear her speak, yet well I know / that music hath a far more pleasing sound)

It doesn't need any commentary. Shakespeare's innovative spirit is there, in full from. Small wonder he later became the greatest among the greats with his plays.

The best known, perhaps, is Sonnet 66, which brings together the turmoils of the author's heart and the hard reality of the turbulent world. The sonnet, which is very close in its contents to the famous Hamlet's soliloquy, seems to be for all time. That's why so many translators tried to render it in Russian. Some succeeded, and some not – or, rather, not exactly. Sort out the best translation from selection that follows
(Text 23) and find some flies on the others if you can.