Page 220 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 23: Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Notes

The 1609 publication of Shakespeare’s sonnets is today referred to as the “Quarto”
and remains the authoritative source for modern editions.

Sonnet 57 - “Being your slave what should I do but tend”
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.
In the previous sonnet, the poet expressed his deep concern over the potential of lust to destroy his
relationship with the young man, and here it appears that his fears have become reality. The poet is
now alone, kept waiting while his dear young friend is out having fun with others. Unwilling to
feel anger towards his friend, the poet allows in his own sadness, longing for the restoration of their
relationship. However, in the final couplet we see that the poet understands completely the folly of
his submissive behaviour, and his acceptance of love as a “fool” (13) is, in itself, proof that the poet
is reprimanding both his lover and himself. In fact, although this poem seems to illustrate the poet’s
disturbing reliance on his lover, one cannot overlook the possibility that the sonnet is highly ironical
and filled with sarcasm rather than self-depreciation. Actually, one could say that both voices are
being heard in sonnet 57: “The friend is meant, I think, to take the poem first as an effusive and oh-
so-sad compliment, and only later to do the double-take”; Did he really mean that? I don’t suppose
he was being sarcastic?’ Precisely because the sonnet is equivocal its protest is the more effective.
But, of course, the protest is largely qualified by the fact that what the poet says is quite literally
true: he does hang about, watching the clock, waiting for the friend to come. Love has made him a
‘sad slave’, ‘so true a fool’. There is in the poetry a kind of verbal shrugging of the shoulders and a
rueful half-smile, especially in the couplet. It is the fact that the poet sees himself in these two ways
at once that makes it possible and even essential to hear the two tones together throughout the
poem” (Martin 73).
Sonnet 57 reflects two attitudes: The weak helpless poet versus the powerful prevailing lover. The
speaker, the poet, is totally humiliated by his lover, he doesn’t have the courage to confront his
partner and express how unjust is he in leaving him for a long time waiting for him as if his beloved
delights in torturing the poet by always lingering and ignoring him. The poet concludes that this is
foolishness and naivety from his part to react as such towards the rough treatment of his beloved;
being a slave and mere servant to his “sovereign” lover.

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