The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 29.0171  Tuesday, 10 April 2018

 

From:        Sidney Lubow <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         April 9, 2018 at 7:34:18 PM EDT

Subject:    Sexpeare at Sixteen

 

“All the world’s a stage” left out the emerging sexual awakening of the young Shakespeare in A Lover’s Complaint, who had not yet started to shave, but he tried to warn those young innocents like him to avoid those prostitutes waiting to pluck the loyal dove of the Sonnets. The bard did not appreciate the Muse, The passionate pilgrim, the fickle maid of ALC, wooing away his love in the mirror as she did in sonnets 41 and 42. Once one knows the Sonnets, one can understand what followed in the bard’s life, as I have attempted to relate to SHAKSPER.

 

 

My contribution to the missing line 2 of The Passionate Pilgrim

 

IX.

 

Fair was the morn when the fair queen of love,

Spied what she sighed for, unstained, unbeguiled

Paler for sorrow than her milk-white dove,

For Adon's sake, a youngster proud and wild;

Her stand she takes upon a steep-up hill:

Anon Adonis comes with horn and hounds;

She, silly queen, with more than love's good will,

Forbade the boy he should not pass those grounds:

'Once,' quoth she, 'did I see a fair sweet youth

Here in these brakes deep-wounded with a boar,

Deep in the thigh, a spectacle of ruth!

See, in my thigh,' quoth she, 'here was the sore.'

She showed hers: he saw more wounds than one,

And blushing fled, and left her all alone.

 

 

This is the part of the stages the bard left out in the Seven Ages of Man.

 

Another reason for knowing the Sonnets! And As You Like it, by the bard.

 

They have their exits and their entrances;

      And one man in his time plays many parts,

      His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

      Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

      And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

      And shining morning face, creeping like snail

      Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

      Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

      Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,

      Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

      Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

      Seeking the bubble reputation

      Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

      In fair round belly with good capon lined,

      With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

      Full of wise saws and modern instances;

      And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

      Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

      With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

      His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

      For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

      Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

      And whistles in his soundt. Last scene of all,

      That ends this strange eventful history,

      Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

            Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

 

Sid Lubow

 

 

 

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