Carlson Fenwick, Professor
In our years-long correspondence concerning
All things Shakespearian Alan Grosbeck and I
Sometimes amused ourselves by concocting
Hare-brained interpretations and pursuing
Them to their risibly illogical conclusions.
Aware for instance that in Elizabethan times
‘Nothing’ was a crude slang word for the
Female genitalia, we searched past the oft-cited
Double entendre of Much Ado About Nothing
And discovered that "nothing" was possibly
Shakespeare’s favorite word. In King Lear
Nothing appears eighteen times in just
Fourteen speeches including Cordelia’s
First words to Lear – ‘Nothing, my lord’ --
And in Lear as a whole we found "nothing"
Thirty-four times in twenty-nine speeches
While in The Winter’s Tale "nothing" appears
Thirty-four times in twenty-six speeches.
There’s plenty of nothing in Hamlet too.
So what was Shakespeare up to there?
Possibly nothing. But plenty of nothing.
We had some good laughs over it.
I miss Alan, interred now at Mount Auburn,
And he came to mind yesterday as I read
Sonnet 73 and recalled how we used to
Imagine all the possibilities of who is
Speaking to whom in these fourteen lines.
Oh, spare me the dull and obvious banality
That it’s an old man addressing a younger.
It could be an old woman and her cat or
A young girl and her doll. Why the hell not?
But then a rather novel interpretation came
To me which I wholeheartedly welcomed.
Was there really something new to say
About one of the most commented-upon
Poems in the English language? I hurried
To my bookshelves and consulted Dryden,
Johnson, Coleridge, the Marxists, Freudians,
The New Critics, and even old Yeats whose
Remark that Shakespeare is only a mass of
Magnificent fragments expresses not at all a
Denigration but instead suggests an analogy
Between Shakespeare and the post-Newtonian
Description of the whole far-flung Universe.
But it seems that no scholar in any age has
Proposed that the ‘speaker’ in Sonnet 73
Is actually the poem itself, nor that the subject
Of the poem is the experience of reading it.
‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold’ --
A coy invitation: If you’ve got a moment to
Engage your imagination, the poem says,
These ink spots on a page can conjure up
A windy fall day, some trees, and a ruined
Church or monastery, perhaps one of those
Closed by Henry VIII. And that’s only the
Beginning of what I, the poem, can disclose
If – and it’s a big if -- you have what it takes
To see it. My coy invitation was also a challenge.
You may ‘behold’ the images, or maybe not,
But the final couplet will offer a congratulation
On what ‘thou perceiv’st’ – with a reminder that
Perception won’t last forever. “This’ in line 13
Refers to the inevitability of conclusion, which
Has been universalized in the poem and is now
Demonstrated by the end of the poem itself.
Is there more? Yes, or maybe not. Oh dear God.
Ed. note: "There’s plenty of nothing in Hamlet, too." True, and the studious reader will note the allusion to this great song from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.
No use complainin'. . .
Readers, vote for the best version. -- DL
Brilliant poem. -- DL
Posted by: The Best American Poetry | January 28, 2020 at 02:04 PM