Thinking that my next play to tackle will be The Taming of the Shrew, but not quite decided on that. Also, my complete works (well, all three of my complete works, because one complete works obviously isn't enough) is currently at my old house, so I'll need to pick that up before anything else. In lieu of a post on a play, I'm looking at a sonnet today.
Not sure if sonnets are included in the Shakespeare in a Year challenge. I suppose they're a major part of his work... It's probably just my general wariness of poetry. Most of it is too artsy and figurative for me to grasp. I like it when I can just let it wash over me, get the general emotional sense from it, but too often as an English major I'm required to analyze it, and I'm simply not up to that task. So please, lower all expectations, because goodness knows when it comes to poetry I have no idea what I'm doing.
This sonnet came up as I've been thinking a lot about Jane Austen, perhaps my second-favorite author behind the Bard (competing with Kurt Vonnegut, Road Dahl, and Isaac Asimov, most likely). My mum and I first watched the five hour A&E version of Pride and Prejudice (with the incomparable Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy) when I was five, and since then I've been raised on the literature of Austen, forming my romantic notions around her stories. This, of course, is always very dangerous; how many women have cursed Disney for giving them unrealistic expectations about love? Superficially, Austen's message about love could be taken badly - "Poor, nice girls get rich husbands" (or, in one specific case, a rich girl gets an equally rich husband; rich husbands, however, are always involved). This, however, is not the conclusion I draw from her work (even though no one minds a rich husband, now do they...); instead, I learn a lot more from her heroines that only through an understanding of yourself and a sense of personal dignity and integrity can you ever be happy; to be in a relationship, you must be able to stand alone.
Forgive the digression. Sonnet 116 comes up in a movie version of Sense and Sensibility (with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, and Hugh Grant among others... it's Ang Lee, and it's divine) where it's Marianne's favorite. She recites it two different times; the first, when she has just met Willoughby who will become her love, and once in the rain outside his estate after he has cruelly deserted her for a richer woman. Here's the text:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
What I argue that Marianne learns is that love is no such thing; although you may love someone, things don't necessarily work out. Love doesn't withstand all problems, it doesn't conquer all, and it isn't all you need (sorry, Beatles).
I suppose some will argue that if love doesn't meet this criteria, an unshakeable thing, then it isn't really love, or true love, or whatever. This just seems silly to me. People are in love all the time; sometimes, when it doesn't work out, they might so "Oh, I guess I wasn't REALLY in love with them. I just THOUGHT I was." However, I think most of the time people were in love, they were feeling something special; we just have to admit that sometimes love, no matter how wonderful it feels, doesn't last.
What's so wrong, after all, with having more than one love? Why does there have to be a one true love? It seems stingy to me, to limit our feelings like that; why would we deny ourselves one of the greatest emotions that we human beings can possibly feel? I'd feel much more gyped to say "Oh, that person I spent the last three years of my life with I didn't really love;" jeez, I hope I loved them to stay with them for so long, to give them my time and energy. If it isn't about love, then what's it all for?
Not that everything is always about love. If I'm attracted to someone, if I go out with someone, it's not because I immediately love them and want to be with them forever and have their babies. There's a lot more that goes into the mix - desires, intimacy, passion, friendship, adventure, etc. And I don't know about other people, but I personally find it damn hard to separate these things out from one another. You can't fractionally distill emotions. Sorry Shakespeare, but love is less like the ever-fixed mark in the sky that never changes than the tempest you claim it looks upon and is unmoved by.
At first I was skeptical of the "love is a raging sea" metaphor as well. Surely it should be steadier than that; all this chaotic, confusing mixing of emotions and hormones was something else that I just didn't get out in adolescence, and I need to suck it up and be mature about these things. Maybe there's some truth; goodness knows I'm a late bloomer, and have less experience with these matters than many other people. But I still don't believe it's that easy to say this is exactly how I feel, I'm conscious of it, and it isn't going to change.
Love, and all other emotions, DO alter with time. Even if they don't change in presence, they change in quality; ask any married couple and I'm sure they'll tell you that the kind of love they felt at the beginning of their relationship is different for the love they have now, and who's to say which is better or worse. A sex buddy can turn into a boyfriend; a once-great love can become nothing more than a good friend.
I don't believe that love, emotions, and people are fickle; rather, I think they are dynamic. Those who claim to be stoic and unmoving are often boring, or just kidding themselves. Perfection is not something achieved once and held the same, but pursued, a journey with no set destination. In the same Austen vein, I cite Mr. Darcy, every woman's fantasy of the perfect man. The thing is, he isn't. What makes him so amazing is his change, and the complement of Elizabeth that brings about that change. Elizabeth and Darcy are not perfect by themselves, but as Austen writes, Elizabeth first "began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both; by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved, and from his judgment, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance." I consider this to perhaps be the best description of a perfect union that exists in literature or anywhere. Two people, wonderful in themselves, realize that by being mutable they can grow both separately and together.
So as lovely as the Bard's verse is, I must contend the message, even if the consequences are that Shakespeare "never writ, nor no man ever loved." Love is dynamic, freeform, altering, mixing, elating, maddening... all the best things in life.
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