Isaac's Informal Research for Sonnet 130

[They wouldn't allow me to take a picture while inside of special collections because they had me on lockdown while I was in there, but I snatched a quick picture before I left. What an experience!]

Traditional Scholarly Source: 

The scholarly source I chose comes from the ELH journal, in an issue titled, "The Scandals of Shakespeare's Sonnets." In this article, Robert Matz discusses the rise in the anthologization of Sonnet 130. He mentions how as Shakespeare becomes an increasingly important subject in undergraduate coursework, the idea of "metapoetics" also becomes important and a subject of interest. It would be good to include the idea of "metapoetics" and how Sonnet 130 fulfills this idea in a paper. 

Informal Online Source:

This source from grin.com describes a certain reading of the sonnet line by line. One important interpretation found here includes the fact that the sonnet is written about the dark lady, not to her. Often, sonnets are written to the object of affection, not about them to another audience. It also remarks on how comparing the lady to nature has an effect of bringing her down to earth rather than exalting her. 

http://www.grin.com/en/e-book/194065/analysis-and-interpretation-of-william-shakespeare-s-sonnet-130

Media Source:

I found this video reading of the sonnet by Stephen Fry (one of my favorite British actors). He does an excellent job of expressing admiration for the love object even while rejecting traditional modes of beauty, and downplaying some of the aspects that may be more harsh on modern ears than they were in Shakespeare's time (such as the fact that her breath "reeks"). It's important to remember that the speaker isn't disparaging the dark lady, but finding a different way to praise her. 

https://vimeo.com/44735899

Social Source: 

I spoke with my brother Daniel about the sonnet. He had read a book of Shakespeare's sonnets written by Helen Vendler (the reason I went to special collections in the first place was to find the book and read her interpretation of Sonnet 130). He mentioned how this sonnet fit in context with surrounding sonnets in talking about the "dark lady." It was the first time I had heard the term, and it made me want to read the surrounding sonnets to find context for this one. 

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Informal Research about Sonnet 130--Micah

-- Salempress' "Critical Analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnets" says of Sonnet 130 that it's a deliberate attack on Thomas Watson's Hekatompathia or Passionate Century of Love, in which the object of affection is compared to a "saint I serve," with a voice like "musicke all of silver sounde," and roses and lilies on her cheeks. These exaggerated metaphors are great fodder for Shakespeare, who upends the Petrarchan ideal of blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty by suggesting his dark lady is mortal, but still far more dear to him than the Anglo fantasy goddesses that poets such as Watson seemed to write about almost exclusively.

-- www.gradesaver (which carries analyses of Shakespeare's sonnets) says that sonnet 130 just masquerades as an attack on Petrarchan ideals, Watson specifically. Its darker meaning has more to do with the speaker's mixed love/hate for the Dark Lady. The object of his lust, the Dark Lady is a far cry from the relatively innocent objects of most cavalier poetry--instead, she is almost TOO real, too mortal, and too unworthy of his affections. He acknowledges she is no goddess. But he still cannot give her up, and so the poem delves into his self-hatred as much as his undermining of the poetic tropes of the age.

--
this video of Tom Hiddleston reading sonnet 130 is curiously devoid of emotion, but I can picture the blankness as a mask which can support either the first or second interpretation. With Hiddleston reading, the sonnet is flexible enough to be a jab at Watson or a surrender to the unaccountable charms of the undeserving Dark Lady.

- I was texting with a seventeen-year-old friend (who has never read Shakespeare), and I persuaded her to read sonnet 130, just for kicks. This was her response:
"By the way, I just read Sonnet 130. It's sarcastic, full of sass, and yet kinda sweet at the same time . . . I like it." She obviously saw it as playful, not an attack on either Watson or the Dark Lady, just a clever reversal of the courtly love tropes readers would have been used to. I think hers is the safest interpretation, but I am inclined to favor the Dark Lady analysis, because it makes more sense within the context of all the sonnets together. Shakespeare is seeing himself fall for a woman who is unfeeling, aloof, and not particularly beautiful in the traditional sense. His own desires baffle him, and thus Sonnet 130 was born.

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