An Analysis of Shakespearean Sonnets 1 – 126

One day I intend to do a line by line analysis of the poem. Since everyone ought to study one epic poem in their life---study it intensely, knowing each nuance, each line, each rhythm---The Shakespearean sonnets will be my subject.

However, upon reading them, I was fully immersed in the notion that Shakespeare was singing about a gay lover. I had begun reading the first 126 lines with that in mind. However, I don't think that's an appropriate reading, and I'd like to explain some of my reasons why.

For one thing, the beginning of the poem seems to insinuate that the subject being carried up was something like a son to Shakespeare, and that this individual had died, or was wounded, while courting a woman. With this in view, it makes a lot of the passages more clear, rather than more opaque. And further, if we account the latter portion of the Sonnets to the subject's mother---the Black Lady---we begin to bring a tapestry of what the poems are about. Hamnet. Whom, probably, was Shakespeare's son to a Concubine, and being encouraged to find a wife and bear a son, he had gotten himself into trouble like Romeo. There's one sonnet in particular where Hamnet is described as Shakespeare's muse in all of his work. And if it's a gay lover, I don't think one can find Romeo and Juliet from that, but rather the plot structure of the first few Sonnets seem to tell a Romeo type story of failed courtship which was fatal.

Further on, there's some references to Shakespeare being a "Slave" to the subject of the poem. Some requite this as gay love, but I find it more probable that Shakespeare is using a device of irony to say that he was his Concubine's Son's slave. Which is more in line, that the adoration---and reference to Hamnet's fair skin and Cheeks---seem to be references to his availability for courtship and the wrong committed against him.

There are some twenty passages I've found that directly relate to death, that the subject has died, and then the poem begins to fracture into two distinct characters. Love and then the Character of Hamnet who becomes a symbol of love. The character, Love, is possibly a reference to the fame of his poem. If Love should die, then nobody would read the Epitaph of Hamnet's. If Love keeps men reading the poems, then love lives even after Shakespeare's death. Then Hamnet, in turn, lives on through Shakespeare's poem. As there are two distinct individuals being talked about in the poem. Separated. There is Hamnet who died. And then the figure of Love, whom Hamnet becomes a symbol for. And the reading of the poem is what preserves the love.

There's several hints that Shakespeare believes the poem will be skewed by the "Sluttishness of Time"; that is, somehow he could foresee the Logos being skewed, and then maybe this faulty interpretation becoming canon. I believe Shakespeare had some inclination that the poem was going to be interpreted as erotic, when he never intended it to be erotic. As the poem's subject is Love. The character in the poem whose cheeks are often referred to is dead or near death, while Love lives on and is continued to be enjoyed for as long as his poem is read, and the epitaph is read. As, the poem several times calls itself an epitaph for the individual in the poem. It is a love poem of a Father's devotion to his Son who died unfairly, when courting a woman. There can be no other interpretation, for the poem is cognizant of its being skewed toward eroticism---several times the poem is self aware that it could be misrepresented or misunderstood. And it might even seem inappropriate for a father to write such a thing about his deceased son. And Shakespeare is cognizant that Love itself could be misrepresented by the poem. It seems embarrassing, as a writer at that time was not prone to using such emotionality. 

However, let us look at the possibility of Shakespeare singing a homoerotic song. Then why refer to the subject having died so often? In the sonnets are some thirty references to death having already happened. Anywhere there is a slight hint of the poem becoming erotic, the next sonnet will bring one to bear with the truth that the poem is actually about Hamnet. Perhaps the "Slutishness of time" was precisely the erotic reading of the poem, that Shakespeare was subtly aware of being a possible rendering. It might have been indecent for a father to sing about his son that way, or the boy might have been commonly known to be of African descent. In either case, the poem is speaking of a Father's love, and his epitaph to his son who became the embodiment of love, having pursued a woman whom he was unequal with for the time's standard.

It is my imagination that Shakespeare was a good man, who loved his son, and when his son wanted to court the woman whom he chose, Shakespeare encouraged it, and this led to the unfortunate circumstance of a wound. Perhaps the sonnets were being written at the time of Hamnet's deathbed, which could be a heart-wrenching song of a father not knowing if his son will survive.

I've written copious amounts of work over the course of a day or two. It's not unlikely that Shakespeare had composed this entire piece in less than four or five days. So, it could have been written while Hamnet was on his deathbed, recovering from a wound he acquired from a failed romance. As the subject is the muse of all of Shakespeare's writing. I leave this off, as it is the interpretation that seems most in line with the subject. A father in the bargaining phase of grief, writing what is the world's best piece of literature.

Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Illustrated. Crown Publishers, inc., 1975. Text.