Tim Murphy is rather unfamiliar with Shakespeare's work. He claimed that my statement that Sonnet 107 was an Easter sonnet flew in the face of everything else that Shakespeare had written. Below is sonnet 146 a highly religious sonnet. Tim Murphy will now explain why what follows isn't a religious sonnet or Tim will have to admit he doesn't know what he is talking about.
Sonnet 146
Poore soule the center of my sinfull earth,
My sinfull earth these rebel powres that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth
Painting thy outward walls so costlie gay?
Why so large cost having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon they fading manision spend?
Shall wormes inheritors of this excesse,
Eate up thy charge? is this thy bodies end?
Then soule live thou upon thy servants losse,
And let that pine to aggravat thy store;
Buy tearmes divine in selling houres of drosse:
Within be fed, without be rich no more,
So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,
And death once dead, ther's no more dying then.
And the last line certainly implies the same message as "O lives of ageless age" in sonnet 107. By believing in Christ and being properly Christian Shakespeare kills death by gaining an immortal life in heaven. (Compare "There's no more dying then" with "Oh! Lives of endless age".) Shakespeare seems consistent in his beliefs doesn't he.
The second line contains a very famous copying error that amazingly no one has ever corrected properly. The line should read,
My sin these rebel powres that thee array,
"My sinful earth" in the second line was just an unfortunate echo from the first list caused by the second line beginning with the words "My sin" and the first line ending with "My sinful earth".
So Tim. Is this a religious sonnet or not? So can we agree that Shakespeare does write religious sonnets??? And if one religious sonnet, why not two? And if two why not a couple more? Sonnet 30 opens, Note:I am editing in the full text of sonnet 30 which I should have done in the first place.
When to the Sessons of sweet silent thought
I sommon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lacke of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new waile my deare times waste:
Then can I drowne an eye (un-us'd to flow)
For precious friends hid in deaths dateles night,
And weepe a fresh loves long since canceld woe,
And mone th'expence of many a vannisht sight.
Then can I greeve at greevances fore-gon,
And heavily from woe to woe tell ore
The sad account of fore-bemoned mone,
Which I new pay as if not payd before.
But if the while I thinke on thee (dear friend)
All losses are restored, and sorrows end.
He is talking about sitting in a church not a courtroom as certain academic idiots would have us believe The following is taken from Shakespeare's Sonnets by Stephen Booth. It is the only explanation that Booth gives.*****Sessions---the periodic sittings of judges, a court of law. Seymour-Smith notes that the legal metaphor "adds the notion of guilt and punishmennt to that of nostalgia". Ingram and Redpath point out that "the atmosphere suggested by the language of the sonnet is that of an enquiry in a manorial court, presided over by thought, the Lord of the Manor, or his Steward, into the condition of the estate, its losses and resources"----I repeat--academic idiots would have us believe Shakespeare is sitting in a courtroom. Can you just imagine--Shakespeare sitting in a courtroom crying his eyes out????? DO YOU THINK SHAKESPEARE GOES TO COURTROOOMS TO CRY!!!!!!But that type of behavior is acceptable in a church, the only place on this planet where it would be acceptable. (The OED gives church services as another meaning of sessions) And in sonnet 107 Shakespeare talks about "the drops of this most balmy time"---again he is having a religious experience and breaking into tears. Sonnets 107, sonnet 146, and sonnet 30 are all religious sonnets.
And the end of the sonnet---
But if the while I thinke on thee (deare friend)
All losses are restord, and sorrowes end.
The only one who restores the loss of dead friends and supplies compensation for the troubles of this world is (if you are not an atheist like me) Jesus Christ. The line should be read
But if the while I thinke on thee, Jesus
All losses are restord, and sorrowes end.
Tim, ignorance about the sonnets is plentiful in this world. You are just a small part of that ignorance.
ewrgall
[This message has been edited by ewrgall (edited June 02, 2001).]
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