Originally posted by AE:
In the first place, "boy" is a very common word, occurring hundreds of times in Shakespeare's works, and in the present context easily applying in its ordinary sense to the young man being addressed in the sonnets (cf. "sweet boy" in sonnet 108). The Franco/legal sense you assert doesn't seem to show up in OED as a recognized English usage, unless my quick perusal missed something. What evidence do you have for this usage, and what in the present context would support such an obscure sense being read into such a common word being used in such a straightforward fashion? Cotgrave (early French English dictionary) defines Boye as "an executioner, a hangman". Shakespeare in a couple places in his plays calls Cupid a hangman. In Loves Labour Lost Biron makes the joke--(not exact quote) "If I fall in love, Hang Me."----Boy is capitalized. That meant it was a generic type of something. Go learn what the printing convention were back in those days.---It is being used straightforwardly. The sonnets are filled with legal phrases. This whole sonnet is about judgment--legal terms fit the sense of this sonnet.
Referring to Cupid (who was a boy) as a hangman was a common joke not just in Shakespeare but in other writers of his time. When Shakespeare wrote "Boy" in sonnet 126 he was not, TOO READERS OF HIS TIME, being terribly obscure. The "cupid=boy=hangman" joke was forgotten over time (When French stopped being the language of the English legal system then a great number of French words dropped out of common usage among the elite) but I have now reclaimed it for Shakespeare readers.
And even if it did mean "executioner," I don't see how you get from that to the message that Shakespeare has been dismissed from Southampton's service. Shakespeare has been predicting his dismissal throughout the sonnets---plus I know what the sonnets just before this one actually say (I know what the "foles of time" are--I know what a "subbornd Informer" is.)(Mind you, I'm not accepting your assumption that Southampton is in fact the addressee of the relevant sonnets; he may very well have been, but that's more than we know for sure.)Just so long as you don't start saying that you believe Bacon wrote the sonnets. Actually there is no evidence whatsoever that they were addressed to anyone but Southampton.
>> Line 1--"power" is also French. It is the word "pouver" (which meant power). At that time the letter v was not used within a word (only to start a word) and "pouver" would have been printed "pouuer". A double U was often replaced with a W creating what was to become the standard English spelling "power". Here the printer used that convention. (In other words the English "power" comes directly from the French "pouver" by means of a printing convention.) <<
So, in other words, "power" actually means "power" here. Interesting about the typesetting conventions, but.... so what? OK, so you are not interested in my small contribution to etymology. Sorry.
>> Line 2--"hower"--This word has been mistakenly taken for "hour" but it is really the French word "houver" with the "uv" by the same printing convention as above converted into a "w". "Houver" in French means "hover" or "hovering". So we see that "time's fickle glass" (the sand in it) and "his sickle" are held "hovering" (making perfect sense of the line's commas.) <<
I ain't no French scholar, but I find it a little hard to believe that "houver", an infinitive form, can mean, not only "hover", but also "hovering." How does that work? In any case, I'm pretty sure it's not going to fly very far in an English poem. The word is, of course, hover. When something is held hover, it means that it is held suspended or hovering. I was just trying to make it clear in what sense "hover" was being used. The proper grammatical term for Shakespeare's use of the word "hover" escapes me.
Admittedly, "hower" is problematic. The usual construction is to take "sickle hour" as a phrase meaning something like "hour of reaping," and this is not quite satisfactory somehow--one of many places in Shakespeare where one would like to think the text has been garbled. But to drag in an unlikely French meaning used ungrammatically is not a very useful way of solving the problem. Shakespeare uses the word grammatically--his understanding of grammar is just better than yours.-----A second (less likely) alternative is that Shakespeare simply spelled "hover" as "hovver" (exactly as it is actually pronounced since many long consonants have a tendency to bleed over into the next syllable). The double "v" would be converted to a "w". Shakespeare did a lot of interesting things in the sonnets. He spells the word "ruined" (a three syllable word in his time) as "rwn'd" converting it into a one syllable word. The vowels "u" and "i" which would have been separately pronounced he converts into a "w" running them together. Finding various uses for "w" seems to have been a preoccupation of Shakespeare's.
>> Lines 5,6,7,& 8--In these lines Nature is personified and represents the Logo created by God that controls all regeneration. <<
Logo? I think you meant Logos... Anyway, this is blasphemy: "in the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." God did not create the Logos, He is the Logos. And what do you mean by "regeneration"?I am an atheist. My Christian theology aint that good. So burn me at the stake.---- Logo or Logos, Nature poetically represents them.---- And it is my understanding that in Shakespeare's time the Logos were the ideas of God which once thought and put in effect continued in action independent of his further contemplation. God's thoughts took on a life of their own. Of course, there have always been six different stories about any religious idea. Judging from your subsequent statement:
>> (Nature herself is not creative. She merely recreates again and again the forms and creatures God invented during the first six days.) <<
I think you might want to check the dictionary on this. "Regeneration" does not mean "repeated generation." In a Christian context, especially, it means "spiritual rebirth." Hence the negative meaning of "unregenerate". Of course, the Logos.... but, let's not confuse the issue too much.......
Random House Dictionary--regeneration--3)to renew or produce anew, bring into existence again, 4)Biol. to renew or recreate a lost, removed or injured part.---
>> to "still keep" meant to keep a distillation of the essence of something <<
Nonsense, "still" means "always, continually." Please present evidence of your highly unlikely meaning.A "still" (my grandfather use to have one in his barn during Prohibition} distills things. Sonnet 119--"What potions have I drunke of Syren tears
Distil'd from Lymbecks (a chemical still) foule as hell within." Quite obviously Shakespeare knew what a distillation was. Sonnet 54---"When that shall vade, by verse distils your truth". Here he distills Southampton's virtues by means of his verse.----The usage "still keep" was not that odd in Shakespeare's time. Fish and beef were "salt kept"--salted and stored--as one example that comes to mind. Familiar with Shakespeare's previous use of distillate imagery in the sonnets and aware of what nature's ability are and are not (nature keeps the body but not the soul) it seems to me that Shakespeare is saying that Nature, through her limited natural processes cannot retain Southampton's essence--his soul escapes her.
>> Southampton had a worldly outlook and was interested in personal fame and worldly pleasures. Shakespeare final poem warns Southampton that he must someday face the judgment of God and he leaves the last lines of this poem blank asking Southampton to fill them in, saying--"Southampton, eventually you must face the judgment of God--what will that judgment be? <<
Your interpretation, aside from points already addressed, is basically right, I think, although hardly original. In all honesty I have never seem the blank lines at the end of this sonnet explained the way I have explained them. So show me a source that gives the explanation I give. Otherwise retract your statement about it being "hardly original".
However, the insistence on a doctrinaire Christian viewpoint is off-center and reductive. The overt antithesis of the poem is purely secular: Nature versus Time. It's not the judgement of God but the fact of inevitable death that is urged on the "boy". This can be assimilated to a "higher" Christian interpretation but there's nothing in the poem that requires it. If Shakespeare had wanted to write dogmatic Christian pronouncements, he was certainly capable doing so, but he didn't. He writes to the existential situation, not to any theological framework in which the existential situation is to be interpreted. What he's saying here is, not, "you're gonna be judged," but, "you're gonna die." That death entails judgement is certainly a potential significance, but it's not specified. The above is a bunch of deliberate bullshit. Nature's Quietus is to render up the bodies of the dead who will stand before God and be judged. How can you possibly deny that most Christian of all images? [/quote]
[This message has been edited by ewrgall (edited September 17, 2001).]
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