THE SONNETS - again

It's strange, isn't it, how sometimes favourable reviews can disconcert more than unfavourable ones. John Self, the estimable denizen of the celebrated blog Asylum, has just written a characteristically insightful review of my recently published novel The Sonnets, which also happens to be highly favourable. In this respect at least I could hardly hope for more. However, in the comments beneath his article there follows (and this is the disconcerting part) a lengthy and to my mind absurd debate between his various readers on the subject of the cover of The Sonnets, which features a (to me at least) beautiful image of a seated woman. Several correspondents are disturbed because the image is "headless". Against this, one of the reasons I liked the picture immediately it was suggested to me by Scott Pack, my publisher at the Friday Project, was that it features a beautiful image of a woman's hands. Female hands are the subject of one of Shakespeare's most beautiful sonnets (amongst the 32 sonnets quoted in full in the text) and female hands are the subject, too, of one of my two imitation sonnets.

No doubt one should allow for diverse opinions, not least on the internet. Another largely favourable and beautifully written review by Sally Zigmond criticises these same two "imitation" sonnets because they "suffer by comparison with Shakespeare". It would be very surprising if they didn't! But just so the reader can judge for his or her self the effectiveness or otherwise of my two imitation sonnets, I'm going to include them both below.

The first occurs when Shakespeare is incensed on discovering that the Earl of Southampton's formidable and Machiavellian guardian Lord Burghley has encouraged his secretary, John Clapham, to write a poem called Narcissus which accuses the youthful Southampton of narcissism, and admonishes him for not turning his thoughts to marriage. Lord Burghley's motive appears obvious because several years before he used his position as Chancellor of the Court of Wards to arrange a marriage contract between the underage Southampton and his own granddaughter, Elizabeth de Vere, which neither of the youthful parties wishes to follow. In response, Shakespeare writes the following sonnet criticising Burghley's role in instigating Narcissus:

Lord of laughter, you showed me Narcissus,
A poem whose heart is hollowed by power;
Falsely addressed, it pretends to kiss us,
Telling of beauty, Cupid’s sweet bower;
Yet cold hearts form cold minds, eyes lose their sight;
Stealing our childhood, it counsels good faith.
Framed by deceit, the sun’s fatal glower
Reversing all virtue, makes permanent night.
In hell’s own smithies, Authority labours,
Shadow on shadow, reversing the year;
And what is more wretched, than making wretched,
When, lacking all mercy, he sheds no tear?
Then punish him not for what he may say;
A mind without light can never see day.

Afterwards, I make it clear that the poem does not survive, because Southampton -- after being amused by its sentiments -- instructs Shakespeare to destroy it in order not to put himself at risk from the formidable Lord Burghley.

The second imitation sonnet occurs when Shakespeare has been rejected in his suit by Emilia Bassano, one of the main historical candidates for the "dark lady". She was also the mistress of Shakespeare's theatrical patron, Lord Hunsdon, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth. In the course of rejecting Shakespeare, Emilia bites the poet's hand, and admonishes him "not to bite the hand that feeds" him. When the wily old Hunsdon notices Shakespeare's bandaged hand, and asks him what was the cause of the wound, Shakespeare replies, "A faithful female hound." Hunsdon, guessing that Shakespeare was bitten by his mistress, admonishes him not to test the patience of "faithful female hounds" in future. Accordingly, in my second imitation sonnet Shakespeare addresses his rejection by Emilia and mentions the subjects of hounds and women's hands, amongst others:

If I hear music in the painted day,
Drawing myself towards those fateful sounds,
And all my thoughts move outward to the lay,
Like lines of scent on which run faithful hounds,
Then I must hide my thoughts in careful praise
Which, praising you, fall short of what I feel.
If I should moan your loss, make better days
The sad account of my most bitter meal,
Your fingers on the cloth, touching their hem,
Press me to sit and watch your subtle hands;
The singular white thoughts which rise from them,
Graceful as hinds towards that hidden land.
O, let me sit beside you while you play,
Allowing thoughts to alter night for day.

As with the first imitation sonnet, I tried to signal to the reader that the poem did not survive (in this case Shakespeare burns it immediately after writing it) and that therefore it was my own construction.