I had an epiphany of sorts during my morning workout, realizing that what’s important to most people about the sonnets is not the scholastic pragmatics underlying them, but that they are expressions of love. Maybe to a small band of dedicated researches they represent key evidence in the Shakespeare authorship mystery… but that’s not why they’ve endured for 400 years as staples of the lover’s lexicon.
As usual, Shakespeare expands the pallette of romantic expression. Whether between a wizened older man adoring Twilight-like male androgyny or as pornography dressed up as a Hallmark valentine, the Bard pushes the range of possibilites to their outer boundaries. That’s one of the reasons why he remains the standard of comparison after all these years. Like Magellan, he mapped the territory that we’re only now getting around to fully exploring.
Eskimos have myriad expressions for snow; and love comes in more flavors than Baskin Robbins has ice creams to celebrate it. Now that I’m over the hump and I’ve addressed the authorship issue in my own half-assed way, I’ll be reveling in the sonnets qua sonnets (thank you, St. Johns) in my usual tiggerish fashion.
After all, that’s what we do bestest.
A Year of Shakespeare 