Sonnet 29 - When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes

Hi, I'm Rebecca Balcarcel. Let's take a look at Sonnet 29 by William Shakespeare. In a nutshell, this poem is saying, "When I feel really bad, I think about you, and I feel a lot better." However, Shakespear says this much more artistically, of course. Line one: "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes..." Okay, so when I'm in disfavor with fortune, with fate, and men's eyes... Other people are looking down on me, I've lost respect in my community, something like that -- and a cultural sidenote: Fortune in the middle ages was thought of as a wheel, so you have the wheel of fortune, and we're... As humans we're continually either on the up or the down part of the wheel, but we're going to be dragged down and then we're going to be dragged up, meaning that good events are going to follow, bad events are going to follow. Good events, bad events. We have no control over- over this fact, unless you can find some kind of still center in the middle. So, to be in disgrace with fortune is to be on the down part of the wheel. Bad things are happening. Line two: "I all alone beweep my outcast state," so I'm alone by myself, and I cry over my state, my condition. And I'm in a condition of being outcast. I'm feeling alone, I'm not part of the community. I feel that my coworkers or my family are rejecting me. So this is my outcast state. Line three: "And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries..." Okay, and bother heaven with my useless cries. The speaker here is talking about troubling heaven, bothering heaven, with these prayers, or these cries, cries to heaven. However, he's discouraged because heaven is deaf. "And trouble deaf heaven." This could mean that he thinks that God does not hear prayers. It could be that he thinks that he himself is not being heard. Other people's prayers are heard, but not his. Or it could mean that he thinks that he's no being heard right now, that sometimes he's heard, but at this point, where he really wants to be heard, he feels like his cries are useless. Line four: "And look upon myself, and curse my fate..." So I'm either looking in the mirror at myself and cursing my lot in life, or I'm introspecting, I'm looking upon myself, and- and I'm unhappy with who I am, what life I have, the life I'm leading. Now line five starts a new section, a new quatrain, a new set of four lines: "Wishing me like to one more rich in hope..." Wishing to be like that other guy, him, who's more rich in hope. Rich in hope could refer to being more hopeful, or it could also mean that this person has more hopes for the future, more potential. He's more likely to succeed. So he wishes to be like this other person, who is rich in hope. Line six: "Featured like him, like him with friends possessed..." So featured like him, it might mean, "I want to have his features, I want to look like he looks." "Featured," in this time period, can also just mean "beautiful" or "attractive." So it could just mean, "I wanna be attractive, like he is." "Like him with friends possessed" simply means like that person who possesses lots of friends. Now it's unclear whether these are two different people or the same person, that this beautiful person with the nice features is also the person who has friends, "like him with friends possessed." Or it could mean, like, another person who has friends. One person's beautiful, another person has friends. We're not sure, from the placement of the word "him," whether they're one or two people, but the meaning is more or less the same. "Desiring this man's art and that man's scope..." Alright so he's saying, "What I like, would like, I desire this man's art, this man's skill, or that man's scope." Here we have two different men mentioned: one who has skills and the other one who has scope. And Scope means opportunities. He has a chances, and promise, potential. Another meaning of scope could be a- a wide understanding, a mind that is intelligent and has this wide understanding. Either way, these are good things that the speaker feels he does not have. "With what I most enjoy contented least;" so the things that I should be enjoying, I don't feel contented with. I'm taking actions and doing activities that I thought I would enjoy, but as it turns out, they don't content me. "Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising..." Okay, yet at this... just when I'm despising myself... Then the rest of the poem is going to explain what happens. I should say here that this is line nine, and traditionally a sonnet has a turn happening here at line nine. It's called a volta. The first eight lines have laid out the problem, and now we're going to turn and find out the solution to the problem. The problem so far has been, "I hate myself. I don't like my life right now, my condition." But now he's saying, "Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising," and despising literally means to look down on, so I'm looking down on myself. Okay. But when that's happening, "Haply I think on thee, and then my state..." [popping sound] Okay, so haply I think on thee. It sound like "happily," which is part of the flavor of that word, but it really means haply: It happens, it- it's just by happenstance, it's by chance that I think on thee. So I think of you, just it occurs to me, this thought of you occurs to me by happenstance. And then my state... Okay, he's about to stay my state changes for the better, but he has an open parenthesis for the next line. So line eleven is: "(Like to the lark at break of day arising / From sullen earth)" "From sullen earth" actually carries over to line twelve, but let me discuss this whole parenthetical phrase together. So, similar to the lark, a bird that arises and flies up at the break of day, at the dawn, a time of hope and beginnings. Okay. Now I should mention "sullen" means brown. The earth being sullen just means that it's dull and dark, not sparkly, not shiny. So the lark arises from the sullen earth, and he says, my state, like that lark, "sings hymns at heaven's gate;" so now his state has changed. Instead of feeling like heaven doesn't hear his prayers, he feels that he wants to sing at heaven's gate. And heaven's gate can mean sky here, where heaven begins, or where the sky exists, but it can also mean, um, the spiritual heaven, or even a spiritual feeling. Heaven's gate can be an internal happiness, or it can a literal heaven, like a location that has an actual gate, and I'm singing there. That's how it feels like, that I'm singing at Heaven's gate. And then we have the final two lines, the rhyming couplet (just means a rhyming two lines): "For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings / That then I scorn to change my state with kings." So that's both lines together. For thy sweet love remembered... For when I remember your love, such wealth brings. It brings such wealth, that I scorn, I reject to change my state with kings. I wouldn't change places with a king. I feel so good. The word "state" has meant before a condition or a state of mind, but here in the final line, it means "chair" or "throne." I wouldn't change my throne for a king's throne. So I wouldn't change my chair for his chair, and I wouldn't change my condition with a king either. So we have a- a- yet another meaning of the word "state." Alright, so that's the basics of the poem. Let me point out a metrical puzzle that happens in line three, "and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries." It may be that you've known that sonnets contain ten syllable lines. So a regular line ought to have ten syllables, and they should have a stress pattern that goes like this: da-DA-da-DA-da-DA-da-DA-da-DA. And line one follows that rhythm perfectly: "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes." Or we could do it this way: "When IN disGRACE with FORtune AND men's EYES." The ten syllables in the meter of da-DA. Line three though, has eleven syllables if you read it this way: "And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries." There's something wierd there: "And trouble deaf heaven..." That's where the problem is. So "trouble" and "heaven..." One of those has got to collapse into just one syllable, and in Shakespeare's time, "heaven" was often pronounced as "heav'n." It may be that you've sung hymns in a church or some Christmas carols that need "heaven" to happen on just one beat, and that's the same thing going on here. "And trouble deaf heav'n with my bootless cries." That would work. Other people say, "No, I think 'heaven' deserves 'heaven.'" Two syllables. Maybe "trouble" is the word that should collapse to one syllable. "And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries..." But then you've got to say it quickly, and it's kind of interesting that "trouble" is the word that makes trouble for this line. Kind of a cute pun, perhaps. But more likey, Shakespeare intended "heaven" to be pronounced as one syllable, and the "trouble" was meant to be just a normal word. We can't know for sure, but probably the heav'n thing makes more sense. Okay, now it feels like we're done, but we're not. I want to give you an- one more lens with which to look at this poem. Obviously the poem's message is fairly simple, like I said at the beginning. The message is basically, "when I feel really bad, I think about your love, and it cheers me up." Now that love can be romantic love, it could be a divine love, but some people see references to physical "love" in this poem, *** innuendos that Shakespeare put in the poem. Here's the argument: Some people say, "well, line one has the word 'in,' line two has the word 'out' very close to the word 'in'. 'In', 'out'." Then we see the word "desiring" later on, and later, farther on we see the word "arising," which some people say refers to an ***. And we also have the word "enjoy." Now this is the most *** word of all. It doesn't seem like it to us, but an Elizebethan audience in the time of Shakespeare also knew another meaning for the word "enjoy," which is to be in the act of having sex. So if I said, "I'm enjoying you," it would mean, "I'm having sex with you," especially from the man's point of view, that I'm a man en- enter- enter- enjoying you, the, uh, lover. So does this change the meaning of the poem, or the- the way that we would interpret the poem? I think it does. If we look through this lens, we have, "when in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes," when I am wishing I were like these other people who have gifts, then, "with what I most enjoy contented least..." That means "with this person that I usually have sex with, I'm contented least." So among the list of things I don't like about my life is the *** relationship with this person, and then when I think of you, I feel better. So, uh, the you is now someone that we wish we were with, and whether this is a- another lover, or a- again, the Divine, or just a deep friendship that I wish, uh, I could stop with this *** relationship, I'd really rather be in this deep friendship with this other person, I don't know. But it does affect the reading of the poem, because it adds one other thing that this person is dissatisfied with. They're dissatisfied with this person they're enjoying. They're not contented with that relationship. So then we have: "thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings that I couldn't change my state with kings." Now let's remember that many of these poems are written to a young man. A lot of the Shakespeare love poems have the audience of a young man. In that light, it could be that the relationship that is being enjoyed, but is not providing contentment, is a relationship with a woman, and that the "you" who makes me happy is a man. However, you could also say that the *** relationship is with a man, and that the "you" is also a man, or a woman, or God, you know. So it doesn't exactly support a homosexual reading, but it could -- It- it's not ruled out. So this word "enjoy" gets us into a whole new territory with this poem. I think whichever way read the poem, more traditional or more ***, we still end up with the final message being the same, which is: "When I think of you, it makes me happy." So, there we go. Well, I hope you enjoyed this tour through sonnet 29, and if you'd like, join me for another video sometime.