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The Comedy of Rosalind
—As You Like It
I show more mirth than I am mistress of.
This forest and my folly prompted change
Of sex, and my disguise dissembles love.
I’m altered by men’s hose and doublet strange,
While sweet Orlando carves on every tree
The name I dare not own, and hangs up verses
Like leaves in praise of unexpressive me.
A silly fear my desperate heart rehearses:
Is he in truth a man of God’s own making,
Or a fraud in gender frenzy’s false allure?
Can love mature beyond charmed Arden’s aching
Once I (no sword upon my thigh) am sure?
O leave me, love that reaches but to lust,
For I desire a higher, harder thrust.
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The Tragedy of Desdemona
—Othello
So beautiful Othello is to me
As Adam was to just-created Eve,
Yet in our Eden lurks an enemy,
And for a misplaced handkerchief I grieve.
I am a child to edifying chiding,
But shrink away from fury in his speech
With reason stifled and crazed rage misguiding.
Should not our love and comfort still increase?
It is the maddening error of the moon,
And I declare I die a guiltless death,
Though sin against the truth seems opportune
While I lie struggling for my final breath.
Nobody murdered me but I myself;
We both have loved not wisely but too well.
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The History of Catherine
—The Famous Life of Henry VIII
Henry and England have my heart and prayers
While I have life. I made his wishes mine
And strove to love his friends, although some bear
Me hatred. As Queen, I made his rule benign
To subjects by my pleas for his good will.
My wealth was wedlock, love, duty well-served,
And to the woman who has served me ill
I add an honor: my patience unreserved.
Foes blew this coal between my lord and me—
May God’s dew quench it! Alas, wenches, fortune
Whirls uncertain. Our blissful harmony
Divorce has turned into a dreadful torture.
I little thought, when I set footing here,
I should have bought my dignity so dear.
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The Romance of Hermione
—The Winter’s Tale
After this lengthy gap of time, no words.
No words, Leontes, only an embrace.
You’ve given me again the will to face
A court that dealt in rigor, not in law.
These sixteen years when I have been thought dead,
Paulina, only solace whom I saw,
Caused friendship to be right interpreted,
Not as adulterous conspiracy
But true affection from your consort due
In words of generous diplomacy,
Spoken to a king allied with you.
Now you and I experience the force
Of self-denial, healing’s only source.
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Margaret Coats lives in California. She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University. She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable work in homeschooling for her own family and others.
Margaret, this is a slightly salacious, yet serious cornucopia of sonnet treats as told by one who appears to be deeply affected by the plight of love and lovers. There are too many choice lines for me from which I could pick a few for my focus. The separated couplet in the beginning of “The Romance of Hermione” was truly inspired and draws the reader into the compelling situation. These are classical poems in the highest sense of the form, and you are the epitome of greatness as a writer. Shakespeare would be overwhelmed.
Roy, forgive me for so long failing to acknowledge such a great compliment. It is so much appreciated that I hardly knew what to say. The “empty line” in the Hermione sonnet is there because she says NOTHING to her husband Leontes in that final scene. It substitutes for the space of time when other characters are telling us, “See how she hangs upon his neck.” Shakespeare might be overwhelmed at these poems because I have re-fashioned many phrases from him, but the final thought about self-denial being healing’s only source is mine, suggested by words of a wise nun. The romances are Shakespeare’s healing and learning plays, extreme in scene and story but ultimately romantic in mature consideration of love (young or old). The self grows beyond itself in giving to another.
Dear Margaret,
Could there be a more appropriate way to honor Shakespeare than fresh poems in sonnet form about his plays written to remember him on his birthday?
I was taken in by the alliterative first line, “I show more mirth than I am mistress of.” That alone gives me much to consider. We are the the masters and mistresses of our feelings and character, a concept that seems to be lost in the present time.
Gigi
Thanks, Gigi. That first line is all Shakespeare. In these four sonnets, there are 24 Shakespeare lines, in whole or in part. Repetition is a great way to remember him! Like the idea you receive from the Bard, that we are masters and mistresses of our feelings and characters. These poems, I hope, show how that works in each of the four main kinds of drama he wrote.
Margaret, I really like the Rosalind sonnet and am planning to share it with my students. “Or a fraud in gender frenzy’s false allure?” – what an interesting line, given our times. As I read it, she’s simply wondering this because of her own going about in disguise – as if who can be sure what’s what in that forest? This, and that bawdy closing line is fun! Feels like some of John Donne’s edgier metaphors in his metaphysical sonnets.
Jeremiah, I hope you will share this Shakespearean tapestry with students. The contemporary line you mention is mine, though about half of what’s here is Shakespeare lines woven together by me. Adding or changing a line in performance is very much a characteristic of theatre, where acting helps carry it off. Your reading of Rosalind is very much how Shakespeare wrote her. She chooses to wear men’s clothes for protection in the country, but regrets it immediately when she finds her beloved Orlando is there too. The idea that she could doubt his manhood shows that leaving aside her womanhood was a bad idea, regardless of good reasons. The bawdy closing line is, as I’m sure you know, typical of Shakespearean comedy, especially pastoral comedy like this where inhibitions are left back at court. BUT you really need to know what I’m quoting there, so please take a look at the box below that I’ll address to you and Paul Freeman both.
Can I echo Jeremiah’s comments. That last couplet in ‘The Comedy of Rosalind’, taken with the line before it, is a killer.
I reckon Shakespeare is rolling in his grave – with laughter!
Paul, thanks for your fun with this; of course Shakespeare had plenty of coarse hilarity in his comic style. But this final couplet is my own irreverent laugh re-wording a thoroughly reverent lyric by the admirable Sir Philip Sidney. Please take a look at the full-size box below addressed to you and Jeremiah, where I can quote it in verse lines.
Ms. Coats, your intellect is an inspiration!
Margaret, truly, your words are uplifting encouragement. Many thanks for posting them here.
Jeremiah Johnson and Paul Freeman, here is the beginning of one of the finest English Renaissance sonnets. When you have a chance, read the full piece, which is easy to find online.
Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things;
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:
Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.
This lies behind my crooked couplet to The Comedy of Rosalind. For Sir Philip Sidney, it was time to renounce earthly love and aspire to Eternal Love. Shakespeare did not steal Sidney’s words; I disrespectfully did so–because Rosalind in her agitation over “gender frenzy’s false allure” probably did want to get beyond lust. She wants to marry Orlando, and ultimately they’ll be sovereigns of her father’s dukedom. But in the Forest of Arden, sexual identity and aspirations get confused. Instead of the high-minded Sidney talk about passing beyond “dust” and “rust,” my Rosalind makes a mental slip showing that she is really thinking about “lust” and “thrust.” This would be crazily funny to any audience watching the hapless girl, dressed as a man, in a state of perplexity about whether her desired lover really is a man!
Dear Margaret,
I love these sonnets. You have given us wonderful , compelling visions of these four characters . I wish I could go and see a play now! Thank you.
Thank you, Maria, for taking the time to read the four sonnets and reply. These four women are characters of different kinds, partly corresponding to the type of play (comedy, tragedy, history, or romance). Catherine of Aragon in Henry VIII is, I think, one of Shakespeare’s greatest women, but the play is too rarely performed. Like you, then, I wish to go and see a play!
Margaret, I’m glad I revisited your inventory of poems, as I really enjoyed these sonnets for Shakespear’s birthday. How ironic the motivation to cross-dress in the Comedy of Rosalind is to today’s “transitions”. To think that there are many out there who will say, “See, even back then…” No!
The History of Catherine interests me, and I hope to read more about her soon.
Thanks, Laura, for finding these! Shakespeare’s plays include a number of female characters who cross-dress to protect themselves, then find love-life set at amusing cross-purposes when they appear to be men. As you say, the motives are nothing at all like what’s behind today’s transitioning. But it was funny to an audience at Shakespeare’s time, when female roles were all played by boys who still had high voices. It wasn’t considered decent for a woman or girl to go on stage. I’m glad you enjoyed Rosalind caught in the perplexity of “gender frenzy.” And seriously, Catherine of Aragon is an admirable heroine both in real life and in Shakespeare, very much worth reading about!
My favourite is the Rosalind sonnet, and my favourite line “I show more mirth than I am mistress of”, which sounds very Shakespearean to my ear.
Another line in another of your sonnets – “And I declare I die a guiltless death” – got me thinking:
Do you have any thoughts about the use of synaloepha in English poetry (i.e. the pronounciation of two syllables, particularly vowels, as one)?
It occurs often in romance-language poetry, as in Italian for example:
Qual rugiadA O qual pianto (where the ‘a’ and ‘o’ are elided)
Quai lagrimE Eran quelle (where the ‘e’ and ‘e’ are elided)
I have not seen it much in English metre; however, I seem to read it in Shelley’s lyrics now and again. The one common example I do find, especially in older poetry, involves the word ‘the’, e.g. “the aspect” as “th’aspect”.
I think that synaloepha, applied to vowels in particular, could greatly enhance the richness of the iambic foot; yet it seems to be relatively rare in English, according to my very incomplete reading of the classics.
Thank you, Daniel. You’re right: that first line of the Rosalind sonnet is entirely Shakespeare’s.
And I see what you mean about the possibilities of elision in the line from Desdemona. Shakespeare has Desdemona deliver five lines after Othello smothers her but before she dies, and to make these sound realistic from a woman who is gasping for lack of air, they are separated, and most are not full pentameter lines. But Shakespeare completes his lines as drama by having Emilia or Othello himself finish them.
One is “A guiltless death I die.” I chose to turn that one into the full pentameter line, “And I declare I die a guiltless death.” My sonnets are soliloquies, each depicting a character who represents a kind of drama, so I don’t introduce words by another character.
Could an actress perform this line by eliding “die” with “a”? The “e” is only there for spelling, and the “i” is long, so “i” would be the vowel pronounced, to the loss of unaccented “a” which only has a schwa sound anyway. That means I could add a word while maintaining iambic pentameter. I’ll suggest two possibilities: “sad guiltless death” or “pure guiltless death.” “Sad” would work because both vowel and word are short. But “pure” would not, because the vowel is long and the word takes a long time to say.
Note that “takes a long time to say” means I am introducing the concept of sound quantity, little considered in English, though it is important in classical languages. But in this line we would be adding a word that, in iambic pentameter, must be unaccented like the suppressed “a.” Otherwise we hear,
and I deCLARE i DIea PURE GUILTless DEATH
Too many stresses in the iambic line, while “sad” in the same place might slip in easily without a stress.
My answer about synaloepha is therefore that it can be done, given careful consideration of several things: (1) natural stress of word or phrase, (2) stress demanded by the meter, (3) quantity, which means not just a long or short vowel sound, but the time occupied by a syllable, and (4) whether the resulting metrical substitution appears natural and pleasing.
And to all that, there are variant pronunciations, whether personal or regional.
The question is a good one!
Thanks Margaret, that gives plenty of food for thought. Quantity is an interesting concept – I’ll have to give Spenser’s Iambicum Trimetrum a fresh read.