William Shakespeare:

‘Two loves have I’

by Gwen Herat

[ Part 2]

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all to short a date.
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines;
And often is his gold complexion dimmed ... XVIII

Apparently the Bard compares his best days as a paragon of youth but lays his feelings on one young nobleman and also on a woman but finds him lovelier and milder than the often punishing days of summer. But, later he changes his mind in the latter sonnets.

The young man's good looks will endure as the eternal summer keeps fading only to come back later.

His youth will endure forever as the sonnet. How right he was because centuries later it is still temperate and awaken our minds to shower praise on it. And Shakespeare questions, ‘shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?’ and contrary to thinking, he is different. His love is not measured against summer but summer is measured against a lover.

Who is this lover; obviously the Earl of Southampton.

We have to lean more on sonnets to find his inner feelings. He never confessed any feelings to anyone but there came a time that his mind nor soul could cope up the tensions within and he had to bear it out. So, he poured them into sonnets, confusing the reader about a young good-looking nobleman and the Dark Lady. We still do not know whether both are the same person on whom he lavished his ardour. But we do know the nobleman to be the Earl of Southampton. Yet, the Bard pours out his heart as though on a beautiful woman.

‘Let me confess that we two must be twain
Although our undivided loves are one
So shall those blots that do with me remain
Without thy help, by me borne alone
In our two oves there is but one respect
Though in our lives a seperable spite.... XXXVI

The Dark Lady

Surely, he is not referring to Anne Hathaway. Then, who is it? The Dark Lady or the earl of Southampton? During Shakespeare's time, any book that was printed was entered upon on a list known as the Stationer's Register. In April of 1593 Shakespeare's poem, Venus and Adonis was entered by its printer, Richard Field who was a Stratford man like the poet who had made a successful move to London. They clicked very well as a combination but The rape of Lucrece was registered on May 9 1594 by another printer called John Harrison. Both poems were dedicated to a young nobleman, Henry writhesley, Earl of Soyhampton who was rich, dashing and influential. Why?

Let's find out.

Shakespeare was swept off his feet by his looks and passions aroused. Shakespeare tried hard to win his patronage as well as his affection. Getting a patron meant getting some financial support and an influential friend. The dedication to the young earl follows the fashion of the time and they exaggerated his high position making the poet very humble. Shakespeare's sequence is not conventional as we find his expressions in sonnet when he describes his mistress’ eyes, lips, breast and hair but turn on his heels to express that the ideal mistress should be white-skinned, blonde and red-lipped and like Juliet, blessed with eyes rivalled the sun. However, with the Bard the situation is not that easy to the extent there is any kind of story. The poet's two loves both in the sense of persons whom he loves with an intense friendship with the man as in sonnet XX where homosexual interests is disapproved. But a sexual relationship with a woman of whom he speaks in harsh terms and with disgust but indicate that man and woman seem to get together to betray him.

Marriage

One reason that Shakespeare's marriage never brough him happiness is that he was very disdainful of women. He considered the whole lot to be vain, proud, deceitful, murderous, homicidal, suicidal, unfaithful, betraying as most of his plays and sonnets reveal.

Did that make him gay or homosexual? One reason is that he showered his affections on a young nobleman. Shakespeare never let himself down. Whatever the cause was, he left it in mid-air and today, scholars are still investigating.

In Sonnet 98 he complains; ‘From you I have been absent in the spring but in a man's absence, the poet feels no such feel, ‘As with your shadow I with these play'.

In trying to connect all elements, he is caught with his pants down with the central problem arising from his affections to The Dark Lady and a young man.

The poet faces more dliemma that the more his imagination dwells on the young man, he risked dissolving into an image which became merely imaginary. Other sonnets sequences tend to be addressed to women so idealised that virtually ceases to be flesh and blood.

His changeable nature set against her perfect immutability. Still on the face of all these and others, he denies his homosexual leanings even if it was in the case of a single person's affection; that of the Earl of Southampton. My guess is that even the Dark Lady was a man.

I can go no further. He has also confused me.