Sonnet 43, by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 43, by William Shakespeare
When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee
4And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Then thou whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow’s form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light
8When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessèd made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
12Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
— William Shakespeare
My most recent pop culture reference point for this is Colin Bridgerton telling Pen he looks forward to sleep because he can see her in his dreams. Woof. Any arguments against Shakespeare being in some way in love with the young man to whom this sonnet was written sounds the same to me as those arguing that Sappho’s poetry was just ‘friendly’ towards all those other women. I appreciate that’s quite a niche reference but it’s my diss topic so it’s quite large in my mind.
Just like works discussing Sappho, the Cambridge School Shakespeare edition I took this from staunchly refers to the addressed man as Shakespeare’s “friend”. While I understand the desire to be cautious and accurate in scholarship, in a “school” edition I think this kind of language fails to accessibly describe the nature of the relationship being described. If I wrote this poem to a friend, let alone over 100, I would rightly expect them to have a lot of questions for me. Of course the cultural context is totally different, but something I truly believe from reading Sappho (and others) is that the feelings behind them are often remarkably recognisable and similar to our own, even if the expression, reception, and contemporary understanding of them is totally different.
This kind of poetry is only relatable because we can recognise the emotions behind it. I’m not going to waste everyone’s time arguing about Shakespeare’s sexuality – just as with Sappho – because we can’t ever know the answer, and sexuality as a concept didn’t even exist until the late 19th centuryFun fact! Homosexuality actually predates heterosexuality as a concept by a good ~30 years. Take that, heteronormativity!. But sweet Eros, this poem is deeply, deeply, homoerotic.
Featured Image: This stretch of Essex estuary features in my dreams a fair amount – to the extent that I see it more in sleep than I do in real life these days. It’s also somewhere I’m only likely to show people I really care about, so it felt right for this poem.
TJC 
