Saturday's Sonnet

Sonnet 94

They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
   For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
   Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds


Previous Knowledge
I thought it would be awesome to add this section to Saturday's Sonnet. Unfortunately I have no previous knowledge of sonnet 94, which is the reason I chose this sonnet today. Hopefully I can put this section to better use next week.


Cold Read
I understood the first line fairly well, which is why I chose the picture at the top. The line reminds me of my favorite scene from Schinlder's List. Schindler tells a Nazi general that true power is not defined by the potential to do harm, but is measured by the amount of control a person has. I like the picture because it reminds me of a grave. After defining power as the measure of control one has over rage and violence, I would want to be remembered as a person of power.
Shakespeare compares the person with power to a stone, moving others, but remaining still in their convictions. The stone is the first reference to nature Shakespeare makes, followed by "nature's riches," "the summer's flower," "lilies," and concluding with "weeds." It is remarkable that Shakespeare would use a simile of a stone and a metaphor of a flower to represent the same thing. Does a flower have the same amount of power as a stone? This might be overkill for the two visuals, because the stone is used to describe the face and conviction of the man with power, while the lily might just serve to show the beauty of such a person. Still, if each item has a power to them, then Shakespeare might be linking these metaphors with the context of the poem.


Acoustics
Since I made a big deal about paying attention to the acoustics in my last post, I dedicated an entire section of this post to checking the emphasized syllables within the iambic pentameter. The first line repeats the "huh" sound two times with the words "have" and "hurt", and the second line repeats "duh" when the word "do" is repeated three times. There are no repeated syllables until line 6 with the the word "husbands." The "huh" sound comes back into play. The world "flowers" is repeated a few times in the later part of the sonnet, emphasizing the "fuh" sound. These sounds might resemble the steady breathing of a powerful person, or perhaps gusts of wind attempting to move the powerful person but failing to do so. But then, every syllable I hear that is not a vowel sounds like a breath or a breeze to me.


Criticism
While searching for criticism, I really wanted to know a scholar's take on what the poem means. I was fortunate to find this article that attempts to do just that.


So what does Sonnet 94 mean? Empson offers an intimidating prospect. One may find somewhat puzzling the mathematics by which he arrives at "4096 possible movements of thought, with other possibilities" ¹⁴ to begin his reading, but his real point--that an indefinitely large number of meanings are conceivable for the whole poem, given the many ambiguities--is clear enough. ¹⁵ His solution is to find the most important meanings among the many options, which he proceeds to do with his usual brilliant ingenuity; but the whole approach takes for [End Page 286] granted that ideas are central, and so the key to understanding the poem is finding the best possible skeleton of ideas. The skeleton that Empson offers is a code of disillusioned realism: "Man is so placed that the sort of thing you [the fair youth] do is in degree all that anyone can do; success does not come from mere virtue, and without some external success a virtue is not real even to itself. One must not look elsewhere; success of the same nature as yours is all that the dignity, whether of life or poetry, can be based upon."


I have no idea how Empson came up with 4096 possible meanings, but his theory of accepting a skeleton of ideas presented by the sonnet makes sense. He brings it back to an idealistic look at the fair youth, pointing out that his success is beyond recognition. In other words, I hope to be the fair youth when I grow up.


Conclusions
1. With all of the ambiguities in this poem, it is a miracle that Empson was only able to find 4090 possible meanings.
2. I need to research who this fair youth is and what he did to make him so successful in the eyes of Shakespeare other than beautify the sage to death.


Bibliography
Philosophy and literature [0190-0013] Pierce yr:2000 vol:24 iss:2 pg:280 -293