SHAKSPER 2000: Re: Sonnet 20

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 04/13/00 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.0780  Thursday, 13 April 2000.

[1]     From:   Sean Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
        Date:   Tuesday, 11 Apr 2000 15:44:10 -0700
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0751 Re: Sonnet 20

[2]     From:   Robin Hamilton <Robin.Hamilton2@btinternet.com>
        Date:   Wednesday, 12 Apr 2000 15:34:09 +0100
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0765 Re: Sonnet 20


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sean Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
Date:           Tuesday, 11 Apr 2000 15:44:10 -0700
Subject: 11.0751 Re: Sonnet 20
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0751 Re: Sonnet 20

Douglas Chapman writes:

>But it's a shame when that line becomes reality for you.

Actually, I'd say that it's authenticity.  It's when all lines become
equal that the true risk of theory makes itself manifest in cynicism.
Or when "towing the line" becomes only towing the line, not actually
challenging oneself and questioning one's ideas.

>Kids in classes inherently understand that Shak. is about sex and fun and
>power and joy; it is only precious in the teacher's minds. Thus all the
>tittering in 8th grade. Shak. was not, nor would he have been today, a
>scholar. He would today be Steven Spielberg; it's the money, guys.

Well, I guess that makes you a materialist, at least in the normal,
broad, definition of the word.  But before you go about complaining how
much contemporary criticism distorts the work, you might want to look at
all you're leaving out in reducing Shakespeare to just another
contestant on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"

>Eric Hoffer is-was-my hero. A bright, gifted man who did not wish to
>waste his life teaching and theorizing in some University or another (I
>mean no offense, but teaching and thinking are antithetical
>concepts-don't protest too loudly) but was a longshoreman at San
>Francisco's docks.

Shucks.  If teaching and thinking are antithetical concepts, I guess
that we have nothing to learn from Socrates, the pre-Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, etc., who all taught, or from the scholastics, who held posts
in medieval universities.

Time to start over, I guess, with learning remaining occult and
unshared. Or perhaps fall back on Newt Gingrich, who couldn't cut it in
academia.

Cheers,
Seán.

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Robin Hamilton <Robin.Hamilton2@btinternet.com>
Date:           Wednesday, 12 Apr 2000 15:34:09 +0100
Subject: 11.0765 Re: Sonnet 20
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0765 Re: Sonnet 20

I'm interested in the thread around Sonnet 20, but a little bothered
that the poem seems to be being treated in isolation.  In the context of
the sequence, we have 17 poems addressed to a young man, then 18, "Shall
I compare thee ..."

For the initial readers, leafing through the Thorpe Quarto for the first
time, a possible reaction would be that at last, here we a have a poem
addressed to a woman.  Sonnet 19, "Devouring time ...", seems to carry
this on  -- till suddenly in line 11 we have the disconcerting and
revealing "him".

Sonnet 20 could be considered as the concluding, if not necessarily
conclusive, moment of this part of the sequence.

Robin Hamilton


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