VOLUME 1: The 560 pages of the first Volume explain Shakespeare's nature-based philosophy in detail, with Appendices and a Glossary that provide further analysis.
       VOLUME 2: The 372 pages of the second Volume provide commentaries on the 154 individual sonnets, and critiques the history of egregious emendations.
       VOLUME 3:The 488 pages of the third Volume selections provide commentaries on Shakespeare's four longer poems and five of the plays from the 1623 Folio.
       VOLUME 4: The 284 pages of the fourth Volume consider proto-quaternary thinkers and artists whose combined insights led to an understanding of Shakespeare's Sonnet philosophy, and then critiques ten thinkers who tried but failed to appreciate the nature-based Sonnet philosophy behind all thirty-six plays in the 1623 Folio.

Truth and beauty

Part 1 demonstrated that the arrangement of the Sonnets to represent Nature (the sovereign mistress), the Mistress, and the Master Mistress corresponds to the relation between nature and the sexual differentiation of female and male. Part 2 considered the first 14 sonnets, which argue that the dynamic of increase between the female and male was the logical precondition for human persistence. The increase dynamic of Part 2 followed logically from the differentiation in nature of the sexual possibility in Part 1.
        Following on from Parts 1 and 2, Part 3 shows how the dynamic of truth and beauty is derived from the natural logic of the previous two Parts. Part 3 is titled ‘truth and beauty’ even though the dynamic between ‘beauty and truth’ considered in the Mistress sequence is the a priori relationship. The title acknowledges that the Poet’s intention in sonnets 15 to 126 is to establish the logical relationship between truth and beauty for the Master Mistress.
        Part 3 first considers the transitional role of the 5 poetry and increase sonnets between increase and truth and beauty. It then demonstrates that the dynamic of truth and beauty is the logical basis for the content of the Master Mistress sequence (1 to 126) and beauty and truth for the Mistress sequence (127 to 154). Before deriving the Nature template from the relationship of nature, the sexual dynamic, increase, beauty and truth, and truth and beauty, Part 3 shows how concepts like the Rose and Muse, the eyes and stars, and the traditional notions of ideas and sensations or ethics and aesthetics relate to the philosophy of the Sonnets.

3.1     The words truth and beauty

Shakespeare uses the terms truth and beauty with consistency throughout the Sonnets. In the logic of the Sonnets the meaning of truth and beauty is derived from the overall structural components of the set (nature, female and male) and the dynamic of the increase argument.
        Until the priority of those components was established, it was not possible to be more specific about the meaning of truth and beauty. As this Part progresses, the logical meaning Shakespeare attributes to each of the words and the nature of their relationship should become clearer.
        In the Introduction it was suggested that truth and beauty, in the context of the Sonnets, has a direct relation to the traditionally acknowledged poles of understanding, ideas and sensations. It was also suggested that the understanding of truth and beauty in the Sonnets corrects misunderstanding about the concepts of ethics and aesthetics in traditional philosophy. Philosophically the words truth and beauty have an advantage over concepts such as ideas and sensations or ethics and aesthetics. In Shakespeare’s consistent and comprehensive philosophy, truth and beauty better represent its logical intent. The Glossary should assist in the appreciation of the logical connection between the words.

3.2     The logical conditions for truth and beauty

The majority of the Sonnets are devoted to the dynamic of truth and beauty. The dynamic includes the poetry and increase sonnets (15 to 19), the Master Mistress sequence (20 to 126) and the Mistress sequence (127 to 154). While the number of sonnets devoted to truth and beauty is ten times those to increase (140 to 14), the truth and beauty dynamic is logically dependent on the increase sonnets and the structural features of the whole set.
        The three-part relationship between nature, the Mistress, and the Master Mistress, (154, 28, and 126), plus the introduction of the increase argument in the first 14 sonnets, establish the logical conditions for the possibility of truth and beauty. Truth and beauty cannot be defined except in relation to those preconditions. They derive their meaning from the preconditions. Any attempt to define them separate from the preconditions results in contradiction and incoherence.
        The traditional method of philosophy, that has created the prevailing mind-set toward the Sonnets over the last 400 years, has excluded the preconditions from its deliberations. In his Sonnets, Shakespeare challenges the inadequacies of the philosophical tradition by demonstrating the logical basis for truth and beauty. His adherence to the preconditions articulated in the basic structure of the set enables the dynamic to be presented consistently in the Sonnets (and in the longer poems and plays).
        Traditional criticism and interpretation of the plays has foundered because the apologetics behind such critiques is based on the prejudicial use of philosophical techniques to justify unsound expectations. Commentators who have been torn between the inherent logic of truth and beauty that draws them to the plays, and the apparent anomalies that arise when they apply their traditionally idealistic notions of ethics and aesthetics, have been gracious enough to blame Shakespeare for the inconsistencies.

3.3     The inherent order of the truth and beauty sonnets

The Sonnet philosophy provides the means to clarify the traditional confusion about the logic of truth and beauty, and their equivalents in traditional philosophy. Once the logical relationship of truth and beauty to the preconditions of nature and increase is acknowledged, truth and beauty, in Wittgenstein’s phrase about the logic of language, are able to look after themselves. Their logical relation to the preconditions guarantees their meaningfulness.
        An immediate consequence of the acceptance of the Sonnet logic is an explanation for the apparent lack of order in the Sonnets following sonnet 20. The sonnets from 20 to 126 and from 127 to 154 do not need to be organised into clearly defined categories (as some who have reordered them would wish) because they are already inherently ordered.
        The sense of disordered order in the truth and beauty sonnets is a consequence of their inherent order. Their inherent order precludes the possibility of classifying them into conceptually discrete groups. Because Shakespeare understood the logic of the preconditions, the individual sonnets have all the ordering required to express the Poet’s ideas without contradiction. To rearrange them into arbitrary categories based on traditional conceits lessens the degree of order by destroying the inherent dependence on the logical structure of the whole set with its sub-sequences and the increase sonnets.
        Categories such as time, marriage, biography, history, word association, rhyme-links, have been used to reorder the Sonnets. Such attempts at reordering commit the Linnaean fallacy, or the expectation there are conceptual systems that can be imposed to categorise definitively the variety of things in nature. While attempts to impose categories can be useful for ulterior purposes, the use of such categories to establish the logical structure of nature leads to contradiction. Even number systems such as mathematics, or systems of symbolic logic based on mathematical models, are logically inadequate as a means to characterise nature.
        By comparison, the numerology of the Sonnets, because it is based in natural logic, succeeds in representing the logical structure of the world. Because the logical organisation of the Sonnets has the correct natural multiplicity, it does not ignore the anthropological roots of conceptual systems such as mathematics and time.
        The only group of consecutive sonnets in the truth and beauty sequence are the 9 Alien Poet sonnets. They are positioned at the halfway point in the set of 154, from sonnet 78 to sonnet 86. Traditionally most commentators have excluded sonnet 81 from the group but, as it is logically connected to 80 with a ‘or’, they present one argument. The number of Alien Poet sonnets (9) relates them directly to the numerological status of the immature youth (126 = 9).
        Ironically, Shakespeare’s places the Alien Poet group in the middle of an extensive sequence of sonnets that to a superficial view lack order. The Alien Poet, and by implication the youth as an immature poet, is a poet whose poetry is known only for its rhyme and rhetoric and the use of limited categories of understanding such as time and immortality. The number of Alien Poet sonnets parodies the expectation for imposed order by those who are blind to the inherent logic of the whole set.
        The deliberate grouping of 9 sonnets in the centre of the sequence specifically addresses the criteria required to write sonnets with the natural logic of the Poet in the truth and beauty sequence. The Poet establishes the logical basis for these conceptual concerns by his recognition of the necessary givens out of nature and increase.

3.4     The positioning of the truth and beauty sonnets

Shakespeare’s decision to use 154 sonnets to present his philosophy had the immediate advantage of giving nature an appropriate number to symbolise her complexity and unity. The arrangement has the function of identifying the Master Mistress’ logical relation to the Mistress and, based on that logical relation, of demonstrating his necessary relation to nature.
        It would be illogical, for instance, if the 28 Mistress sonnets occurred first, followed by 126 youth sonnets. If the increase sonnets occurred in the rearranged Mistress sequence, their significance for the Master Mistress would be lost and if they occurred at the beginning of the rearranged Master Mistress sequence, their numbering (29 to 42) would lack incisiveness. The logical dynamic from the Master Mistress to the Mistress would also be lost.
        The Master Mistress sequence is devoted principally to considering the relationship between truth and beauty or between ideas and sensations generated by ideas in the mind (such as the ideal or God). After the increase sonnets, the remaining sonnets are about the logic of truth and beauty. The Mistress sequence is organised to present the logic of beauty and then the logic of truth. It presents the relationship between external sensations and ideas.
        The capacity of the sequences to represent the philosophic dynamic of the mind is conditional on the logical relation of truth and beauty. Whatever variety of subject matter is addressed in sonnets 15 to 154 it is governed by the logic of beauty and truth and truth and beauty. It will be shown that the dynamic of truth and beauty is the logical basis for the articulation and expression of the subject matter in the sequence after sonnet 20.

3.5     The poetry and increase sonnets (15 to 19)

The poetry and increase sonnets form a logical link between the increase sonnets and the sonnets from sonnet 20 on. They facilitate the passage from the corporeal concerns of the Nature template and the Increase template to the conceptual concerns of the truth and beauty sonnets. They provide a logical connection from nature and increase to truth and beauty.
        The Sonnets derive their consistency from an adherence to the philosophic lifeline that relates the meaning of the Nature female/male template to the dynamic of truth and beauty. It is as if Shakespeare sustained his creative impulse with an umbilical connection back through the increase dynamic to nature.
        Once the Sonnets were organised to indicate the logical division into increase sonnets and truth and beauty sonnets, Shakespeare addressed the issue of the logical difference between the increase argument and the truth and beauty dynamic. If truth and beauty is the logical dynamic for any thought, and so of any sonnet, how can the 14 increase sonnets be effectively distinguished from the truth and beauty sonnets? To put the issue another way, why, in the increase sonnets, do the words truth (twice in sonnet 14) and beauty (17 times throughout) occur if increase is prior to truth and beauty, as stated in sonnet 14? If truth and beauty are the two modes of perception (equivalent to ideas and sensations), how can the increase sonnets say anything when they set out to describe a dynamic of pure sensation and not of ideas?
        Shakespeare resolves the potential dilemma by incorporating a double conditional, or a two-tier acknowledgement of the apparent difficulty. Given nature and the sexual dynamic, the increase sonnets at the beginning of the set provide the first conditional. They form a sub-group marked off from the rest by the use of the word increase in the first line of sonnet 1 and the words truth and beauty in the last line of sonnet 14. Their subject matter is the sexual process, a physical process that can occur without the involvement of the mind. Because the sexual process is also prior to the processes of the mind then the mind, as derived necessarily from the sexual process, is logically able to consider the physical processes.
        The second conditional is introduced at the beginning of the truth and beauty sequence. The 5 sonnets, 15 to 19, perform a similar function for the truth and beauty sonnets that the 14 increase sonnets perform for the whole sequence. (It is not irrelevant that 14 = 1+4 = 5, or the number for human kind that corresponds to the 5 sonnets 15 to 19.) The 5 sonnets serve as a transition between the physical focus of the increase sonnets and the conceptual dynamic of the truth and beauty sonnets. In the literature, they have been recognised as a distinct group, though their significance has not been appreciated because the significance of the increase sonnets has not been recognised. Through them the Poet acknowledges the relationship between the fact of increase and the cognitive processes of the mind.
        Kerrigan (1986) recognises the relation of increase to poetry beyond the theme of increase in sonnet 14 into 15 to 19. But despite his recognition that sonnets 15 to 19 form a distinct group he doesn’t draw the obvious conclusion that the first 14 sonnets are dedicated solely to increase. Neither is he prepared to acknowledge the increase argument as a profound influence on the content of the rest of the youth sequence or on the logical status of the Mistress sequence.
        In the 5 poetry and increase sonnets, the Poet explicitly recognises the fact that his philosophic understanding is presented in the form of sonnets as poetry. The whole set is conditional on the adequacy of language and particularly the sonnet form to convey the philosophic understanding of the Poet. As that understanding is based on the dynamic of increase then the language of the Poet, or any language, necessarily derives from that dynamic. If an understanding claims not to be derived from the increase dynamic then it will be inconsistent with the processes of life and so illogical.
        Because the sonnets are verbal (they are presented in signs of language rather than unlanguaged physical activity), then all the sonnets are subject to the dynamic of truth and beauty. The distinction drawn between the increase sonnets, the poetry and increase sonnets, and the remaining sonnets is a thematic one derived from the basic logic of their inter-relationship. The 5 poetry and increase sonnets are crucial for the expression of the logic of the whole set.
        The traditional disjunction between fact and value, that forms an intractable contradiction in traditional or apologetic philosophy (Hume, Kant, Moore, etc.,), does not arise for Shakespeare because value is not logically possible if the priority of increase over truth and beauty is not acknowledged.
        For Shakespeare, as for Darwin, value resides in the priority of the body over the mind. The mind only has ‘value’ if it acknowledges its logical derivation from the biological potential. The organisation of the Sonnets represents the logical dynamic between body and mind. The 5 poetry and increase sonnets provide the second conditional before the presentation of the dynamic of truth and beauty proper gets under way in sonnet 20.
        In the poetry and increase sonnets, Shakespeare takes account of the role of the Poet, and the fact that his philosophy is presented in the form of poetry or sonnets. His philosophy is best presented in the sonnet form because it allows a combined argumentative and lyrical strain that most effectively presents and represents the dynamic of truth and beauty.

3.6     The individual poetry and increase sonnets

The first of the poetry and increase sonnets is one of a pair (15 and 16) logically connected with a ‘but’.

When I consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment.
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the Stars in secret influence comment.
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky:
Vaunt their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory.
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay,
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful time debateth with decay
To change your day of youth to sullied night.
    And all in war with Time for love of you
    As he takes from you, I ingraft you new.
                                    (Sonnet 15)

But wherefore do not you a mightier way
Make war upon this bloody tyrant time?
And fortify your self in your decay
With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
And many maiden gardens yet unset,
With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,
Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
So should the lines of life that life repair
Which this (Time’s pencil or my pupil pen)
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair
Can make you live your self in eies of men,
    To give away your self, keeps your self still,
    And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.
                                    (Sonnet 16)

        To initiate the transition from the increase sonnets to the truth and beauty sonnets, sonnet 15 reiterates the increase argument from the previous 14 sonnets until, in the couplet, the first mention in the set of the possibility of writing occurs. In a double metaphor, the Poet moves to counter the inevitable decay of time by telling the youth he will ‘engraft (him) new’.
        He bases his metaphor in the observed increase of plants (15.5). The argument of the Poet’s verse has been to encourage the youth to increase, or at least make him aware of the significance of the process of increase. The metaphor of engrafting conveys his idea that, in the process of writing verse to convince the youth of his logical role in life, the sonnet captures an aspect of the youth when young.
        The Poet’s offer to ‘engraft’ the youth in his poetry is immediately conditioned in sonnet 16 with the statement that increase is the ‘mightier way’ to engraft. By comparison poetry is ‘barren’. The lines of life are more potent than the lines of poetry so the youth ‘must live drawn’ by the activity of ‘Time’s pencil’ or penis rather than the Poet’s ‘pen’. So sonnets 15 and 16 introduce the process of poetry by stating its logical relation to the process of increase.
        Sonnet 17 introduces the idea of verse in the first line.

Who will believe my verse in time to come
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say this Poet lies,
Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.
So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termed a Poet’s rage,
And stretched meter of an Antique song.
    But were some child of yours alive that time,
    You should live twice in it, and in my rhyme.
                                    (Sonnet 17)

        In sonnet 17 the Poet argues that the fidelity of verse to life is questionable. But if the youth has a child then he would ‘live twice’ in that child. The youth would live once in his own right and once in the child’s right, plus he would live in the Poet’s ‘rhyme’. (A significant interference in the meaning occurs in most modern editions with the traditional emendation that moves the comma in line 14 to place it after twice.) So, in sonnet 17, the conditional advanced in 15 and 16 is reiterated and becomes the basis for the idea that, if the youth increases, or acknowledges the logic of increase, the record of his memory in the poetry is validated.
        Sonnet 17 is the midway point of the 5 sonnet group. It is the crossover sonnet between the increase argument and the truth and beauty argument proper. Significantly this is the first sonnet to mention the word ‘Poet’. Until now (from sonnet 10) the Poet has referred to himself as I, me, or mine, etc. The introduction of the word Poet in the sequence devoted to the poetry and increase theme is logically exact.
        The Poet positions himself as the mediator between the increase sonnets and the truth and beauty sonnets. Of the 5 sonnets, this is also the only one to specifically mention the words ‘truth’ and ‘beauty’. In the transition from the last line of sonnet 14 with its logical statement regarding truth and beauty to the beginning of the truth and beauty dynamic proper in the combined sonnets 20/21, sonnet 17 associates beauty with the ‘eyes’ and truth with the ‘tongue’. This is consistent with the presentation of truth and beauty in terms of saying and seeing in the Mistress sonnets 127 to 152.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say this Poet lies,
Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.
So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termed a Poet’s rage,
And stretched meter of an Antique song.
                                    (Sonnet 17.4-12)

        The identification of beauty with ‘eyes’ and truth with ‘tongue’ (language) initiates the logical relationship that is sustained consistently throughout the truth and beauty sonnets. It also hints at the erotic association of eyes and tongue that come into play from sonnet 20 onwards. There is no overt eroticism in sonnets 1 to 19 (except for the thematic pun on pen in sonnet 16), because the sexual nature of the increase argument presents the logical conditions for the physical dynamic prior to the dynamic of the mind.
        Having established the conditions for representation in poetry in sonnets 15/16 and 17, sonnet 18 compares the youth to a summer’s day. Unlike the seasons, which come and go, the youth has a double means to perpetuate himself. He can increase and he can be remembered in poetry.

Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,
And every fair from fair some-time declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
    So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
                                    (Sonnet 18)

        The natural logic of poetry and increase is expressed in line 12, ‘When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st’. The ‘eternal Summer’ of the youth will be perpetuated both in his ‘lines’ of descent and in the Poet’s ‘lines’. The seamless expression of the two elements that constitute the relation of increase to truth and beauty in the form of poetry gives sonnet 18 its lyrical force. The Poet fuses two apparently opposed states of affairs in a cascade of images that coalesce in a singular image of the ‘eternal’ potential of life.
        Within the space of four sonnets (15 to 18), the Poet has taken the youth from the bare argument for increase to the possibility he exemplifies as the Poet of the Sonnets. After all, he is the one who appreciates the logic of the increase argument and the one who writes the poetry in which the youth desires to be remembered. For the Poet, the two possibilities have been resolved. As a Poet who presents his philosophy in the form of sonnets, his use of the dynamic of truth and beauty is as critical as his appreciation of the increase argument. The ‘this’ of line 14 of sonnet 18 refers to the Poet’s poetry that acknowledges its relationship to the logic of increase and is thereafter liberated because of its logically consistent use of the terms truth and beauty.
        Sonnet 19 completes the cycle from the overt expression of the logic of increase in sonnets 15 and 16 to the empowerment of poetry to fulfill its function in the exploration of the dynamic of truth and beauty. The logical element in the increase sonnets then becomes the underlying principle for the truth and beauty sonnets. This transition, from the physical processes for eternal youth to the conceptual processes of the Poet’s philosophy in verse, is celebrated in line 14 of sonnet 19. Only increase allows the youth to perpetuate himself bodily into the future. Verse offers but a representation of the youth at a fixed moment in his life. The youth is trapped into living ‘ever young’ in the Poet’s verse.

Devouring time blunt thou the Lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce Tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long lived Phoenix in her blood,
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,
And do what ere thou wilt swift-footed time
To the wide world and all her fading sweets:
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,
O carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen.
Him in thy course untainted do allow,
For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
    Yet do thy worst old Time despite thy wrong,
    My love shall in my verse ever live young.
                                    (Sonnet 19)

        In Part 2.10 examples were given of the pervasive influence of the increase argument on the remainder of the sonnets. Logically the truth and beauty sonnets, and for that matter all the sonnets, cannot be understood unless the relationship between increase and truth and beauty is maintained in the reading of every sonnet. Traditional Sonnet interpretation has failed to appreciate the significance of the whole set because it has slighted the increase sonnets, misunderstood the role of the poetry and increase sonnets, and brought to bear on the remaining sonnets a psychological attitude incapable of appreciating the logical dynamic of truth and beauty.
        The logical transition between the purely sexual argument of the increase sonnets and the nature of argument and poetry in, effectively, all the sonnets brings with it the criticism of attitudes toward life that deny the significance of the increase argument in the determination of truth and beauty.
        Similarly the plays dramatise the philosophic consequences for such attitudes. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, for instance, Berowne states the case.

Why? all delights are vain, and that most vain
Which with pain purchased, doth inherit pain,
As painfully to pore upon a Book,
To seek the light of truth, while truth the while
Doth falsely blind the eye-sight of his look:
Light seeking light, doth light of light beguile:
So ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.
Study me how to please the eye indeed,
By fixing it upon a fairer eye,
Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed,
And give him light that it was blinded by.
Study is like the heaven’s glorious Sun,
That will not be deep-search’d with saucy looks:
Small have continual plodders ever won,
Save base authority from others’ Books.
These earthly Godfathers of heaven’s lights
That give a name to every fixed Star,
Have no more profit of their shining nights,
Than those that walk and wot not what they are.
Too much to know, is to know nought but fame:
And every Godfather can give a name.
                                    (Love’s Labour’s Lost 1.1.77-98)

        Eyesight is ‘blinded’ by the poring over books if it is not associated with the ‘fairer eye’. The ‘fairer eye’ is the eye of the sexual organs. These two eyes, that of the face and that of the sex, need to be combined if what is written in books is to be more than ‘base authority from others’ books’. Shakespeare’s writing is alive because he does not deny the relation of the mental eye and the sexual eye. As in the poetry and increase sonnets, this passage negotiates the relationship between the two eyes.

3.7     The introduction of the Poet

The introduction of the Poet in sonnet 10 in the first person as ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘my’, and the introduction of the Poet by name in sonnet 17 identify him as the fourth entity of the Sonnet logic after nature, the Mistress, and the Master Mistress. The 6 references to the Poet as Poet belie the numerous times (over 300) the Poet refers to himself as ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘mine’, etc. The word Poet is introduced in sonnet 17 rather than in sonnet 10 because only nature is named in sonnets 1 to 14, the increase sonnets. Appropriately the Poet is named Poet in the sonnets dealing with the relation of poetry to increase.
        All instances in which the word Poet is mentioned are in the sonnets to the youth, and on each occasion the word is capitalised. Four references are to the Poet of the sonnets and two are to the Poet in association with the Alien Poet.
        So Shakespeare introduces the Poet into the sequence in sonnet 10 where he refers to him as ‘I’, ‘my’, and ‘me’.

O change thy thought, that I may change my mind,
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
Be as thy presence is gracious and kind,
Or to thy self at least kind hearted prove,
    Make thee an other self for love of me,
    That beauty still may live in thine or thee.
                                    (Sonnet 10.9-14)

        The unusualness and significance of his introduction in sonnet 10 can be gauged by the fact that all other sonnet sequences of the time introduce the Poet or speaker in the first person in the first sonnet. Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Edmund Spenser, Henry Constable, Richard Barnfield, Sir John Davies, and Lady Mary Wroth all introduce the ‘speaker’ in the first sonnet of their sequences.
        Not only does Shakespeare wait to introduce the Poet in the first person until after the logical definition of love in sonnet 9, he introduces him in sonnet 10, the first sonnet of the structure of twelves. The structure of twelves (12 x 12 = 144 sonnets) relates to the concept of time, making it appropriate that the Poet’s concept of self should be introduced at the beginning of the temporal pattern.
        The presence of the ‘I’ in sonnet 10, 145 sonnets from the end of the set, is further indication that the Poet is associated with the number 145 (Diag 28).

3.8     The Poet’s relation to the set of 154 sonnets

In keeping with the identification of the octave of music with the Mistress, and hence nature, the musical structure of the set encompasses all the sonnets from the first to sonnet 154. By contrast, the configuration for time is located within the bounds of the set (9+12 x 12+1) where 9 sonnets at the beginning and 1 at the end buffer it from a direct connection to nature. This is consistent with time’s role as an agency of nature and as a conceptual construct artificially dividing the day into 12 hours, 60 minutes, etc.
        Similarly, the relation of sonnet 10 and sonnet 145 to the beginning and the end of the complete set indicates the Poet’s status. The Poet’s numbering of 145 demonstrates both his connection to and distinction from the 154 of nature. The number 145 is both a linear version of the more complex numbering of nature (154) and is a unity in its own right.

        The Poet’s numbering of 145 cannot logically coincide with both the boundaries of the set (1 and 154) simultaneously. The dual nature of the Sonnet poetry as argument and verse means he cannot be connected to the beginning or the end at the same time. As, logically, poetry presents a human perspective on the relationship of nature, the Mistress, and the Master Mistress, the Poet both creates a conceptual artifact in his role as the philosopher in the Sonnets and, through the music of his verse, demonstrates his relationship to the Mistress and nature.
        The potential to become a Poet (a consequence of the increase dynamic) is recognised by the fact that the first 9 sonnets establish a logical gap between the Poet and nature at the beginning of the set. His connection to nature is acknowledged in the sharing of a common boundary with nature at sonnet 154 (Diag 29).

        The Poet, unlike the youth, does appreciate the logical relationship between himself and the Mistress, and hence the relationship between himself and nature.
        Likewise, the Poet’s numbering also recognises the continued influence of his own youthful idealism even after he has established a mature relationship with the Mistress (as evident in sonnet 145). The positioning of sonnet 145 allows a similar connection to be made back to sonnet 1, the first sonnet of the Master Mistress sequence, from the Mistress end of the set (Diag 30).

        So sonnet 145, as the irregular sonnet where Shakespeare (in his persona as Poet) acknowledges the woman who was his lifelong companion and the mother of his children, clearly identifies the Poet with the number 145. The relationship is also encrypted in the numerology of the Dedication, where the 145 letters represent the Poet (see 5.2).

3.9     The Poet of the Sonnets

The writer of the sonnets was introduced as ‘I’ in sonnet 10 as part of the physical dynamic of the increase argument. He is introduced as the Poet in sonnet 17 to acknowledge the significance of the poetry and increase sonnets as a logical interlude between increase and truth and beauty. The poetry and increase sonnets consider the nature of poetry as a medium for the presentation of the Poet’s philosophy. The change of focus from the physical to the mental is recognised in sonnet 17 by the naming of the Poet as Poet.
        Sonnet 17 initiates the possibility of the youth living in the Poet’s ‘rhyme’. In the poetry and increase sonnets the Poet is certificated as a human being who appreciates the logical status of poetry for human beings and is capable of giving expression to that understanding. In sonnet 17 he is named twice in keeping with his double role: once, in terms of the beauty of the youth’s eyes (17.7), and so his capacity to increase, and again in terms of the Antique song of truth’s tongue or his capacity to write effective poetry (17.11). This is consistent with the way beauty and truth are defined in sonnets 127 to 137 and 137 to 152.
        The double role is reflected in the structure of the Sonnets. In his ministrations to the youth, Shakespeare identifies his own youthful experiences. Like the youth, he once required a reorientation from his idealistic musings to appreciate his own logical relationship to the female or the Mistress. In this sense he is identified with the number 9. As the Poet of this set of Sonnets, though, he has fulfilled the requirement he imposes upon the youth. The numerological unity that is his through his numbering of 145 (145 = 1) is a consequence of his successful combination of the 9 of the youth and the 1 of the Mistress.

        The 9+1 can also be derived from 145.

        The Poet of the Sonnets understands the logical relationship between the Master Mistress and the Mistress. The Poet is the one who combines the 9 of the Master Mistress and the 1 of the Mistress. In the Sonnets there are frequent instances where the relationship of the 9 and the 1 are mentioned or used. In sonnet 38 a tenth Muse is added to the old nine to ‘bring forth eternal numbers’ in a reference to both the increase process and the writing of poetry. Sonnets 135 and 136, the Will sonnets, add to 9 (135 = 9) and 1 (136 = 1) as do other pairs of structurally significant sonnets. (The Poet’s combination of the numbers 1 and 9 corresponds to the way the Mr. W. H. is encrypted in the Dedication. See 5.3.)

3.10     The Poet as male or female

As the ‘I’ of the Sonnets, the Poet establishes a first person relationship between himself and the Master Mistress from sonnet 10 to 126, and with the Mistress from sonnet 127 to 154. These relationships are based on the logical dynamic between the male and the female and their derivation from nature. The Poet, as male, accepts the priority of the female as the logical condition for human existence. Then, with the proviso of the logical condition for love in sonnet 9, the Poet is able to consider any form of relationship with male or the female without contradiction.
        The combination, in the Poet, of the philosophic constituents of the Master Mistress and the Mistress suggests that even though the Poet remains a male, he establishes a unity between the masculine and feminine aspects of his persona. He reconciles the Mistress persona in his status as the Master Mistress by acknowledging the logic of his biological derivation from the Mistress.
        While the Poet of the Sonnets is a male (as Shakespeare was a male) the argument of the Sonnets does not preclude a female Poet from achieving a similar rapprochement with the masculine side of her persona, as does Kate in The Taming of the Shrew. At the level of personae, or the masculine and feminine dynamic, the Sonnets identify the feminine as being inherently allied to the logical status of the Mistress and the masculine as inherently allied to the logical status of the Master Mistress. Although the Mistress is inherently a biological unity, when it comes to the writing of poetry she is dependent upon the full development of her masculine tendencies to be able to write at a level where the masculine sustains an idealism that does not divorce it from the logical relationship to her feminine side.
        The situation is a logical one. Any particular person will manifest degrees of masculine and feminine characteristics that influence both their sexual dispositions and expressive capabilities. Consistent with this, Shakespeare does not argue that all people should increase or that all artistic persons are males. Rather he establishes the logical conditions for any person to be able to write, particularly if they want to write the way he is able to write. The sexual dynamic and the logic of increase in nature lead to the gender differentiation between feminine and masculine and so to the possibility of artistic expression. (Part 4 considers the role of the mythic poet.)

3.11     The Alien Poet

The Alien Poet is the second poet (or group of poets) introduced into the sequence to the youth by Shakespeare as a device to demonstrate to the youth the inadequacy of the alien’s poetic inspiration compared with the consistency of Shakespeare’s complete set of 154 sonnets. The alien poetic is characterised by formalism and academicism and well turned ‘rhymes’. Its style is in contrast to the genuineness of the Poet’s thoughts and feelings derived from a correct understanding of nature implicit in the increase sonnets.
        The Sonnet logic, as well as providing a consistent basis for love, leads to poetry of great truth and beauty. The concerns are expressed unequivocally in sonnet 32.

If thou survive my well contented day,
When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey:
These poor rude lines of thy deceased Lover:
Compare them with the bettering of the time,
And though they be out-stripped by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
Oh then vouchsafe me but this loving thought,
Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought
To march in ranks of better equipage:
    But since he died and Poets better prove,
    Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love.
                                    (Sonnet 32)

        Both the whole set of 154 sonnets as nature and the Poet as 145 have a numerological value of 1, indicating a natural harmony between the Poet and nature. Their differing numbers, though, suggest there is a distinction between the Poet and nature that preserves the priority of nature. By comparison, the Alien Poets are on the same inadequate level as the youth. The role of the Alien Poet is explored in the commentary on the 9 Alien Poet sonnets 78 to 86.
The role of the Alien Poet is considered more fully later in this Part and in Part 4.

3.12     Increase and truth and beauty in the first sonnet

Before considering the truth and beauty dynamic in sonnets 20 to 154, it is instructive to review the first two lines of the first sonnet. Shakespeare’s logical approach to the possibility of understanding and expression is heralded in the first couple of lines of the whole set. The first sonnet demonstrates that every sonnet and every line of every sonnet is a clear and forceful expression of his brilliant logic.
        It has already been observed that sonnet 1 introduces the increase theme of the first 14 sonnets in the first line. It was also noted that the last lines of sonnet 14 mentions both truth and beauty in preparation for the concentration on that theme in the remaining sonnets.
        As the first 14 sonnets focus on the physical process of increase, a process that can occur without the intervention of language, the Poet acknowledges the nature of their subject matter or content in his distribution of the words truth and beauty. Whereas beauty occurs 17 times throughout the 14 sonnets, truth only appears twice and that is in sonnet 14 at the point of transition from the increase sonnets to the remaining 140. The only use of a derivative of the word truth is in sonnet 8, the music sonnet, where the word ‘true’ is used adjectivally.

If the true concord of well tuned sounds.
                                    (Sonnet 8.5)

        The decision not to use the word truth in the body of the increase sonnets indicates the significance of the words truth and beauty in Shakespeare’s philosophic system. Because the increase sonnets present the issue of physical increase in a verbal form (as against, for instance, through a practical demonstration) they elicit responses both in the form of sensations (beauty or aesthetics) and present an argument of an evaluative nature (truth or ethics). Because they are presented verbally, as a poetically based argument that presents the logical status of the body to the youth, the increase sonnets do not differ from the other sonnets in the number of evaluative words used.
        In the 14 sonnets there are many evaluative words such as niggarding, shame, small worth, praise, self-love, abuse, unfair, deface, duteous, true concord, murd’rous shame, good and evil, tyrant, virtuous, compare, glad, sorry, crime.
        The most telling instance of the acknowledgement of the special status of the increase sonnets is in the sonnet that presents the logical sine qua non, sonnet 11. Where it might be expected that the word truth would feature in the relationship between increase and truth and beauty expressed in line 5, Shakespeare writes instead,

Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase,
                                    (Sonnet 11.5)

        For the sake of consistency, with the embargo on ‘truth’ in the first 13 increase sonnets, he substitutes the word ‘wisdom’ as a synonym.
        The unrivalled dynamic of argument and poetry, of philosophic verse and lyrical verse, in all the sonnets, is a consequence of Shakespeare’s understanding of truth and beauty. The logical elements of the dynamic are introduced in the first two lines of the first sonnet.

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s Rose might never die,
                                    (Sonnet 1.1-2)

        The first substantial word of the whole set, ‘fairest’, carries with it the double sense of the most beautiful or admirable, and the most just or impartial. Both a sense of aesthetic effect in the appreciation of beauty, and a sense of ethical evaluation in the sense of determining truth or falsehood, are possible readings of fairest. This interpretation is borne out in the by-play on the word ‘fair’ in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Forester: Hereby upon the edge of yonder Coppice;
A stand where you may make the fairest shoot.
Princess: I thank my beauty, I am fair that shoot,
And thereupon thou speak’st the fairest shoot.
Forester: Pardon me Madam, and I meant not so.
Princess: What, what? First praise me, and again say no.
O short lived pride. Not fair? alack for woe.
Forester: Yes Madam fair.
Princess: Nay, never paint me now,
Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow.
Here (good my glass) take this for telling true:
Fair payment for foul words, is more than due.
Forester: Nothing but fair is that which you inherit.
Princess: See, see, my beauty will be saved by merit.
                                    (Love’s Labour’s Lost 4.1.983-96)

        In the last line, ‘my beauty will be saved by merit’, confirms the logical relation between the two meanings of fairest in terms of beauty and ‘merit’. Shakespeare tacitly introduces the dynamic of truth and beauty into the sonnets in the first substantive word.
        The dynamic of truth and beauty, introduced in the word fairest, is immediately anchored by the word creatures. By aligning the qualities of the mind with those of the body the Poet characterises the human as a thinking animal. Shakespeare’s determination to give his philosophy a basis in ordinary human sensibility is evident in the word creatures. Humans are necessarily related to other species by their common biological descent. As the appropriately named Apemantus in Timon of Athens says.

                                        The strain of
man’s bred out into Baboon and Monkey.
                                    (Timon of Athens 1.1.298-9)

        Both the highest attributes of the human mind and its logical connection to the natural order are evoked in the initial phrase, ‘fairest creatures’.
        Also in the first line is the phrase ‘we desire increase’. Desire evokes the operations of the mind, the conscious part of the dynamic that has the physical act of sex, with its potential for reproduction, as its source and goal. The word increase refers to the biological necessity, the physical fact of human existence, whose logic is the basis of human life. As Benedick, (the good dick), says when he learns his lesson about the logical consequences of bachelorhood (if used in opposition to natural inclinations) in Much Ado About Nothing.

                                        No, the world
must be peopled.
                                    (Much Ado About Nothing 2.3.1063-4)

        Increase and desire, then, are contrasted and aligned. The sexual (of the body) and the conceptual or erotic (of the mind) as the vital components for a consistent philosophy of life, are introduced in the first line.
        The word beauty is introduced in line 2. It is immediately associated with the Rose (an anagram for Eros). The introduction of the Rose at this early point in the increase sonnets identifies it as the element in the Sonnets that characterises beauty or the processes of sensation. Its significance is apparent in the fact it is capitalised throughout the set in the original of 1609. The word Rose introduces the idea of Eros in an encoded form because Eros cannot flourish in the form of erotic verse until sonnet 20. The encoding indicates that the status of verse as inherently erotic is implicit in the increase dynamic.
        The significance of the placement of ‘beauty’s Rose’ in the increase sonnets is matched by the introduction of the Muse, the element that characterises truth in the sequence to the youth, in sonnets 20/21. The occurrence of the Muse in sonnet 21 is no accident. The function of the Rose and the Muse and their exact relation to beauty and truth is explored later in this Part (see 3.92).
        The logical connections between these various elements, established in sonnet 1, spread as underground roots throughout the whole set of Sonnets. Their introduction in the first two lines of sonnet 1 indicates their importance to the whole scheme.

3.13     Truth and beauty in sonnets 20 to 154

It is important to remind oneself continually of the previous elements in the Sonnet arrangement that logically determine the issues currently being investigated. The whole set establishes the relationship between nature and the female and the male, or Mistress and Master Mistress. The increase sonnets then introduce the logical dynamic for the persistence of the human species under the aegis of nature. The poetry and increase sonnets then take account of the medium in which the ideas are being presented.
        As a prelude to considering the truth and beauty dynamic proper, the first two lines of sonnet 1 have been considered for their relevance to the relationship of truth and beauty and increase. In the following sections the general features of the truth and beauty sonnets in both sequences and their similarities and differences are considered.
        They provide the logical preconditions for the dynamic of truth and beauty. They form the logical basis for the various issues considered in the remaining sonnets. By characterising the processes of the mind consistent with the initial structural elements in the Sonnets, sonnets 20 to 154 can be presented without a systematic arrangement into further categories of thought.

3.14     The logical divisions in the truth and beauty sonnets

The structural division of the truth and beauty sonnets at 126/127 into the Master Mistress and Mistress sonnets, the 14 increase sonnets, and the 5 poetry and increase sonnets, allows the Poet to write with unerring consistency.
        The introduction of the 9 Alien Poet sonnets at the half way point of the set (78 to 86) develops the arguments of the poetry and increase sonnets. The last two sonnets, 153 and 154, while different in style from the rest, accentuate the relationship between the sexual and the erotic. An understanding of the significance of the relationship is critical for an appreciation of the mythic dynamic in the set.
        The structuring of the set into divisions corresponding to the basic intervals associated with music (8) and time (12) provides a subsidiary dimension of ordering that does not relate directly to the logical development of the truth and beauty sonnets. Music as the rhythm of nature and time as an agency of nature are present as characteristics of the dynamic of the whole set.

3.15     Truth and beauty in the Master Mistress sequence

The differentiation between the two main sequences in the set of 154 on the basis of the biological distinction between the male and the female affects the way in which truth and beauty is treated in each of the sequences.
        The increase sonnets and the poetry and increase sonnets are introduced at the beginning of the Master Mistress sequence because it is the male who needs to be reminded of his logical need to re-establish his relationship with the female. The dynamic of truth and beauty in the youth sequence is always conditioned by the given of the increase argument. As has been shown, reminders of the increase argument surface with regularity throughout the truth and beauty sonnets to the youth.
        Similarly, issues of poetry and verse are dealt with only in the sonnets to the youth. Consequently, the Alien Poet group (78 to 86) and references to the Alien Poets only occur in the youth sequence. The possibility of writing poetry, or argumentative verse, is conditional on the male element in the Sonnets.
        As a result, the logic of language is addressed in the Master Mistress sonnets. The capacity of language to give expression to aspects of the actual world as well as give expression to ideal possibilities in a virtual world is the persistent theme of sonnets 20 to 126. The Poet attempts to demonstrate to the youth the logical nature of the ideal and the logical consequences of not distinguishing between reality and the ideal. In sonnet 126 the youth is brought to audit. Either he has understood his logical relation to the Mistress, or failing that, he faces the reality of being ‘rendered’ directly back into nature without increase.
        The dynamic of truth and beauty developed in these sonnets has its source in the increase sonnets. It particularly has its source in sonnet 14 where it is identified as being logically related to the ‘eyes’. The relationship to the eyes will be explained more fully later in this Part (see 3.109). The dynamic of truth and beauty also has consequences for the potential for immortality.
        As there is no possible grouping of themes into categories within the truth and beauty sequence, all possible themes have their origin in the first 19 sonnets and appear already logically determined at any point in the truth and beauty sequence. The discussion of the ‘eyes’ as the source of truth and beauty for the whole set, and the issue of mortality as it affects the youth sonnets, demonstrates the correct method for considering the themes of the truth and beauty sonnets. The Poet has the freedom to distribute the various sonnets as he wishes within the number of sonnets needed to provide a consistent numbering system to do justice to the logical consistency of the philosophy. The basic numbering of 154 in total and parts of 28 and 126 meet these conditions.
        Shakespeare exercises the same freedom when appropriating source material for the plays. By being true to his generating logic, he is able to create distinctive work. He uses the generating logic to correct the inadequacies inherent in the source philosophies. The apparent ease of the operation, an effective sleight of hand, has left legions of academic commentators fruitlessly scratching through the sources to locate an element to explain Shakespeare’s achievement.

3.16     Truth and beauty in the Mistress sequence

The Master Mistress derives from the Mistress and ultimately must return to the Mistress. In her priority as female the Mistress is aligned with nature and so inherently embodies the increase principle. The sonnets to the Mistress do not require a conditional that establishes the priority of increase because the Mistress is the repository for increase. Hence there is no increase argument in the Mistress sonnets. The couple of times it is broached it is present as a fact and not as part of an argument.
        The dynamic of beauty and truth in the Mistress sonnets is not concerned, as are the youth sonnets, with the isolation of the ideal from the world about. Because the Mistress, through her direct association with nature, is the basis for the differentiation into male and female, such identification with one pole of the possibilities does not occur. This is accounted for in the numbering of the Mistress and nature as both 1 and 2. The prior nature of the Mistress relative to the male allows the Poet, in the Mistress sonnets, to consider the generative conditions for the derivation of beauty and truth.
        In the Mistress sonnets beauty is not imbalanced toward the ideal as it is in the Master Mistress sonnets. Because they consider beauty first (127 to 137) and truth subsequently (137 to 152) the Mistress sonnets consider the logic with which external or bodily sensations become ideas in the mind. Hence, in contrast to the youth, the Mistress is the undifferentiated embodiment of all sensation whether ideally beautiful or unconventionally fair. She is equally capable of being the inspiration for ‘music music’, and of being the embodiment of ‘lust’.
        ‘Simple-Truth’ (from sonnet 66) is confounded in the Mistress sonnets because it is continually rising into a clear expression of ethical distinctions and subsiding into its generative basis in sensation or beauty. Sonnet 144, for instance, makes a direct comparison between the status of the youth and the condition of the Mistress.

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still,
The better angel is a man right fair:
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
                                    (Sonnet 144.1-4)

        The distinction between the better and the worst seems quite clear, but under the dynamic of truth and beauty the apparent good of the youth is not guaranteed when it is confronted by the complete embodiment of truth and beauty in the Mistress.

To win me soon to hell my female evil,
Tempteth my better angel from my sight,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil:
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turn’d fiend,
Suspect I may yet not directly tell,
But being both from me both to each friend,
I guess one angel in an other’s hell.
    Yet this shall I ne’er know but live in doubt,
    Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
                                    (Sonnet 144.5-14)

        The use of the words ‘angel’ and ‘saint’ parodies the biblical relationship between God and the Devil in which the firing of Satan out of heaven (where God is considered omnipotent, or the ultimate expression of the ideal) still leaves the issue of the relation of good and evil unresolved. Sonnet 144, in concert with the other Mistress sonnets, gives a consistent representation of the relation of good and evil. The Poet does so because he has a consistent understanding of the relation of truth and beauty in terms of the male and the female out of the increase dynamic in nature.
        As with the truth and beauty sonnets in the Master Mistress sequence, there is no division of subject matter into categories in the Mistress sonnets. The division of the sequence into thirds at sonnets 136 and 145 is a secondary structuring. The punning references to Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway recall the introduction of the Alien Poet group at the mid-way point of the set (sonnets 78 to 86). By locating the subsidiary structures at intermediate points Shakespeare avoids the confusion that would arise if they were incorporated into the truth and beauty dynamic.
        The priority of the Mistress over the Master Mistress makes her the repository of the beauty and truth dynamic. This is confirmed by the manner in which beauty and then truth are presented consecutively in the Mistress sequence.
        Sonnet 127 mentions beauty six times, and the processes of sensation are then considered (particularly in sonnet 130 where all five are mentioned) until beauty is mentioned for the last time in sonnet 137 and truth for the first time. There they are identified with ‘seeing’ and ‘saying’ respectively.
        Beauty is considered first because, in keeping the sexual differentiation out of nature, the dynamic of truth as true and false is derived from the singularity of beauty, or the processes of sensation. Sonnet 138 then introduces truth by having the Mistress ‘say’ something for the first time. The word truth features in the first line, and the consideration of truth continues through to sonnet 152, where the word occurs twice, in the tenth and the last line. The notion of swearing an oath is carried through from sonnet 138 to 152 where there is a veritable dictionary of swearing, the most deliberate form of saying in the language.
        The brilliance of Shakespeare’s philosophic presentation of the basic notions of beauty and truth, in a way more exact than any philosophy before or after, will be considered in detail in Part 3.68 where the beauty and truth dynamic in sonnets 127 to 154 is presented.

3.17     The mythic possibility

The poetry and increase sonnets are included in the truth and beauty sonnets to the youth to facilitate the transition from the arguments of the increase dynamic to the possibility of poetry. Sonnets 153 and 154 conclude the truth and beauty dynamic of the Mistress sonnets because they demonstrate the way in which the logical conditions for the possibility of writing as presented by the structure elaborated up to that point can be used for mythological expression. They do this by showing how the traditional forms of mythology can be rewritten according to the Sonnet logic.
        If the Sonnets provide the basic philosophic conditions for the writing at a mythic level, then the last two sonnets give an example of mythic writing based on the principles of the Sonnets. Their use of a traditional mythological form of expression emphasises their mythic purpose. The original epigram, though, accounts for only part of the content of sonnets 153 and 154. Academic sleuths have not located material similar to the last few lines of both sonnets. This reading of the Sonnets suggests there is no other source because Shakespeare completes the sonnets with ideas derived from his basic argument.
        Both sonnets suggest the Poet is not able to find the cure for his diseased state of mind in a mythological conceit. Rather he finds it in the sexual ‘eye’ of the Mistress.

    Where Cupid got new fire; my mistress’ eye.
                                    (Sonnet 153.14)

        The Sonnets are followed in Q by A Lover’s Complaint, which provides an elementary example of the Sonnet principles in practice in a more extended form than sonnets 153 and 154. Its role as an elementary form of expression of the principal arguments is reflected in the simple form of its numerology (see 5.8).
        What distinguishes Shakespeare’s mythic expression, from the mythical or mythological expression of the Greeks, the Christians, or Romans such as Ovid, is the combination of the basic elements of myth with a critique of the conditions for mythic expression. This is apparent in the last two sonnets where the mythological world of Cupid and the maids of Diana and the Nymphs, with its symbolic language of fire and wells is, at the end, brought to focus on the sexual parts of the Mistress.
        The same use of myth and its resolution in the logic of sexual practice is the theme of such plays as Love’s Labour’s Lost, Measure for Measure, The Tempest (much to the annoyance of Ted Hughes who wanted the ‘mythical’ fantasy to persist), Twelfth Night, All’s Well that Ends Well, and others.
        Shakespeare was 300 years ahead of his time. Only recently, in the poetry of Stephane Mallarmé and the art of Marcel Duchamp has there been an equivalent appreciation of the dynamic of myth and an acceptance of its basis in everyday life. The correspondences between Shakespeare’s critique of myth and Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass are examined in Volume 4.

3.18     Truth and beauty in sonnets 20 to 126

So far the case for the dynamic of truth and beauty as the logical basis for sonnets 20 to 154 has been outlined. Now the sonnets in the Master Mistress sequence will be examined for evidence of the pervasiveness of the truth and beauty dynamic. (The individual sonnets are examined in detail in Volume 2.)
        As the logical status of truth and beauty is given explicitly in the Mistress sequence, the exploration of the occurrence of the truth and beauty dynamic and related themes in the Master Mistress sequence sets out to demonstrate the persistence with which the Poet brings the dynamic and its consequences to the attention of the youth. When the Mistress sequence is considered (see 3.68) it will be seen that the truth and beauty dynamic even more resolutely determines the organisation of the content.

3.19     From increase to truth and beauty

All the significant ideas mentioned in the truth and beauty sequence are first mentioned in the increase sonnets and the poetry and increase sonnets. Major concepts such as nature, increase, truth and beauty, and the Poet, are introduced as are other concepts, such as love, the eyes, music, time, poetry, art, astronomy, the seasons, and the Rose.
        The last line of sonnet 14 identifies truth and beauty as two concepts that give logical coherence to all the sonnets because without increase they meet their ‘doom and date’. Ideas and sensation cannot persist without increase. Truth and beauty then become the determining dynamic for the remaining sonnets following sonnet 14. After the transitional sonnets, 15 to 19, the Master Mistress sequence presents the truth and beauty dynamic as it relates to the male or masculine aspect of the sexual dynamic. They address the idealistic youth’s inadequate and inconsistent appreciation of the truth and beauty dynamic. The youth does not understand how truth and beauty interrelate logically.
        The ordering of the argument in the whole set, with the Master Mistress sequence preceding the Mistress sequence, means the youth’s incoherent understanding of the dynamic, and the Poet’s attempted reorientation of the youth’s understanding, in terms of the increase argument, precede the definitive presentation of the truth and beauty dynamic in the Mistress sequence. As the source of the male possibility, the Mistress is the natural repository of the logical form of the dynamic.

3.20     The pattern of truth and beauty in the youth sequence

While there is no systematic argument in sonnets 20 to 126, beauty is mentioned in sonnets 21, 22, 24 and 34, before beauty and truth feature together in sonnet 37. In keeping with the process of instructing the youth, sonnet 37 signals the persistence of the double dynamic throughout the rest of the sequence. Truth and beauty occur together again in a further five sonnets and they occur separately in another nineteen sonnets or thirty-two times altogether until sonnets 110 and 115, respectively.
        The first sonnet to bring truth and beauty together is the last of the increase sonnets.

As truth and beauty shall together thrive
…
    Thy end is Truth’s and Beauty’s doom and date.
                                    (Sonnet 14.11-14)

        Truth precedes beauty in this crucial sonnet because the dynamic of truth and beauty is the principal concern of the sequence.
        Then, appropriately, they occur together in the central poetry and increase sonnet.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
…
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
                                    (Sonnet 17.5-10)

        The logical preconditions of nature and increase allow the Poet to site the sonnets containing the dynamic of both truth and beauty where he wishes.

Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
                                    (Sonnet 37.4-5)

Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits,
…
And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,
…
Where thou art forced to break a two fold truth:
…
    Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
    Thine by thy beauty being false to me.
                                    (Sonnet 41.3-14)

Oh how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
…
    When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth,
                                    (Sonnet 54.1,14)

No shape so true, no truth of such account,
…
    Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
                                    (Sonnet 62.6-14)

Uttering bare truth, even so as foes Commend.
…
They look into the beauty of thy mind,
                                    (Sonnet 69.4-9)

For thy neglect of truth in beauty died?
Both truth and beauty on my love depends:
…
Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,
Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay:
                                    (Sonnet 101.2-7)

        The pervasiveness of the influence of the truth and beauty dynamic is evident in the persistence of the occurrence of the terms throughout the rest of the youth sequence.

19.12    For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
21.2     Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
22.5     For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
24.2     Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart,
48.14    For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.
53.7     On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,
60.11    Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
63.6     And all those beauty’s whereof now he’s King
63.12    My sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life.
63.13    His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
65.3     How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
65.12    Or who his spoil or beauty can forbid?
66.11    And simple-Truth miscalled Simplicity,
67.7     Why should poor beauty indirectly seek
68.2     When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
68.8     Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay:
68.12    Robbing no old to dress his beauty new,
70.3     The ornament of beauty is suspect,
72.8     Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
77.1     Thy glass will show thee how thy beauty’s were,
79.10    From thy behaviour, beauty doth he give
83.11    For I impair not beauty being mute,
93.13    How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow,
95.3     Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name?
95.11    Where beauty’s veil doth cover every blot,
96.8     To truths translated, and for true things deemed.
104.3     Such seems your beauty still: Three Winters cold,
104.14    Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.
106.3     And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
106.5     Then in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,
106.8     Even such a beauty as you master now.
110.5     Most true it is, that I have looked on truth
115.7     Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,

3.21     The introduction of the major themes

The first few truth and beauty sonnets (20 to 25) establish the major themes that occur with frequency throughout the sequence. Sonnets 20/21 reiterate the relation between nature, the sexual dynamic, the increase argument, and the dynamic of truth and beauty. Then sonnets 22 and 23 consider the status of the Poet in relation to the youth and to the process of writing, and sonnets 24 and 25 consider the source of truth and beauty, the eyes.
        As the sequence continues, these themes are interwoven into a tapestry that captures something of the complexity of life without losing the coherence afforded by the underlying logic out of the earlier structuring. The sequence ends with sonnets 122 to 126 that present the logical ascendancy of nature and increase over the concept of time, which represents the trajectory of life to death.

3.22     Sonnets 20/21, beauty and the Muse

The first sonnet of the truth and beauty dynamic proper is sonnet 20, which cannot be considered apart from 21. The two are a pair connected by the logical conjunction ‘so’.
        It has already been noted that sonnets 5 and 6 and 15 and 16 are logical pairs. There are further such pairs and logically related groups throughout the set (see A. 3). The failure to take account of the connection between such logically related sonnets has led to such blatant errors as dismissing 6 and 16 as sonnets irrelevant to the increase dynamic, and the belief that sonnet 81 is not an Alien Poet sonnet.
        Sonnet 20 considers the logical relation of the youth to the Mistress and nature, while sonnet 21 takes the conditions articulated in 20 and draws the logical conclusion for the dynamic of truth and beauty.

A Woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted,
Hast thou the Master Mistress of my passion,
A woman’s gentle heart but not acquainted
With shifting change as is false women’s fashion,
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling:
Gilding the object where-upon it gazeth,
A man in hue all Hews in his controlling,
Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
    But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,
    Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.
                                    (Sonnet 20)

So is it not with me as with that Muse,
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven it self for ornament doth use,
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare
With Sun and Moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems:
With April’s first born flowers and all things rare,
That heavens air in this huge rondure hems,
O let me true in love but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair,
As any mother’s child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air.
    Let them say more that like of hear-say well,
    I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
                                    (Sonnet 21)

        The sonnets to the youth, on the theme of truth and beauty, are united as a group by the mention of the Master Mistress in sonnet 20 and the sovereign mistress in sonnet 126. It is not by accident that nature is also mentioned in these two sonnets. The first two lines of sonnet 20 characterise the youth as derived from Nature, the sovereign mistress, that establishes the priority of the female. The youth, as the Master Mistress, is the male derivation from the Mistress. As a consequence of his derivation from the female he exhibits residual female traits along with his masculine characteristics.
        The status of the Master Mistress or youth is a logical one. Sonnet 20 is explicit in identifying the logical status of the youth as a male whose physical orientation or ‘love’ is towards ‘women’s pleasure’ and whose ‘passion’ or ‘love’ toward the Poet is conditional upon that understanding.
        As many commentators have noted, including the otherwise ‘embarrassed’ W. H. Auden, sonnet 20 leaves no doubt that the relationship between the Poet and the youth was not homosexual. By the logic of the whole set, sonnets 1 to 126 are necessarily to a male. The 126 sonnets sustain the biological balance with the female of the Mistress sonnets and with Nature, the sovereign mistress. Because the youth can equally be seen as a persona of the Poet (as can the Mistress and nature), the possibility of homosexuality is not a logical concern of the youth sequence. Sonnet 20 is explicit as to the relation of the Poet, the youth, and the Mistress.

And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
    But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,
    Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.
                                    (Sonnet 20.9-14)

        The heterosexual dynamic is logically prior to any other possibility because the heterosexual disposition is evident in the conditions of conception and birth for all human beings. But while the heterosexual dynamic is the basis of increase it does not follow from the logic of increase that all human beings can or should participate further in the increase process. If all humans increased and did so frequently the world would soon be over-run.
        The variety of sexual dispositions and attitudes that freedom from such a universal requirement allows has become an inalienable and invaluable part of the human cultural community. It can be observed that many other species have non-reproductive members. Darwin, for instance, successfully surmounted the criticism that the existence of infertile drone bees was fatal to his theory of evolution.
        The increase argument in the Sonnets is not inherently contrary to any of the many forms of love. As a philosophic argument it establishes the logical basis for the possibility of any form of love. As a philosophic argument it locates the logical basis for the possibility of truth and beauty. And by adhering to natural logic Shakespeare can write sonnets in which the abiding sense of love and the prevailing sense of truth and beauty are consistent, coherent and inextricably intertwined.
        With the logical relation of the Master Mistress and the Mistress to nature established in sonnet 20, the Poet then moves to introduce the truth and beauty dynamic in the second half of the pair, sonnet 21.

So is it not with me as with that Muse,
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
                                    (Sonnet 21.1-2)

        Truth is introduced in the guise of the Muse in the first line. The Muse characterises truth in the sequence. Truth in the sonnets is the dynamic of conscious evaluation in language between right and wrong, good and bad. The idea is expressed succinctly in Ulysses speech in Troylus and Cressida where he says ‘justice’ is the ‘endless jar’ between ‘right and wrong’. Shakespeare’s appreciation of the logic of language recognises that truth does not signify or symbolise a sense of absolute goodness, or of ideal perfection. The state of absolute goodness or ideal perfection is an aesthetic state dependent on a sensation of the mind and so belongs in the province of beauty or the counterpart to the Muse, the Rose.
        The word Rose occurs 14 times in the complete set and the word Muse occur 17 times in the youth sequence. All the occurrences and their significance will be examined later (see 3.95). For now it is sufficient to point out that the distinction between the Muse and the Rose, and hence between truth and beauty, is critical to an appreciation of the clarity of Shakespeare’s thought. The beauty of the Rose is associated with immediate and persistent aesthetic effects, whose primary mode of reception in the mind is through sensation (or aesthetics). In contrast, the Muse is associated with verse (in this instance) whose primary mode of expression and assimilation is in the dynamic of words with their logic of continuous evaluation (or ethics).
        The distinction is most clearly drawn in sonnet 101.

Oh truant Muse what shall be thy amends,
For thy neglect of truth in beauty died?
Both truth and beauty on my love depends:
So doth thou too, and therein dignified:
Make answer Muse, wilt thou not haply say,
Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,
Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay:
But best is best, if never intermixed.
                                    (Sonnet 101.1-8)

        In the first two lines, the neglect of truth by the Muse, or confusion as to its logical status, brings about the ‘death’ of truth and beauty. This is especially the case when beauty is mistaken for truth or truth for beauty. The inability of traditional philosophical systems to fully appreciate and consistently apply the distinction is the major criticism, particularly of idealism, that emerges from the Sonnets.
        An example of the persistence of the confusion regarding the dynamic of truth and beauty beyond Shakespeare’s time is evident in the decision by modern editors to emend the word ‘died’ in line 2 to ‘dyed’. Ignorance of the way in which the logic of the truth and beauty dynamic is developed out of the preconditions established by the principal structuring of the Sonnets leads them to think ‘di’d’ (as in the original) is a contraction for dyed in relation to the colour metaphor introduced later in the sonnet. The visual rhyme with ‘dignified’ suggests the appropriate reading.
        In sonnet 21, the Muse is just such a divided voice that looks to painted or artificial beauty for inspiration. It is of the nature of the Muse or truth that there is an inherent degree of error, or ‘endless jar’ between ‘right and wrong’, in the processes of judgment. The Muse in sonnet 21, (the youth’s Muse) makes the mistake, condemned in sonnet 14, of looking to the heavens for inspiration. The Poet knows that, inherent in the nature of the Muse, there is the capacity to recognise a wrong and put it right. That capacity is a logical consequence of the increase/truth and beauty dynamic.
        Beauty is introduced in the second line.

So is it not with me as with that Muse,
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
                                    (Sonnet 21.1-2)

        Beauty is any form of sensation unmediated by thought. Its characterisation as the Rose (introduced in sonnet 1) highlights the sense of immediacy associated with beauty. The sense of immediacy temporarily conceals other aspects of the Rose’s form such as thorns, canker, etc.
        Both the Master Mistress and the Mistress are capable of functioning logically in terms of truth and beauty. The Mistress as source of the male, and the source of the logical relationship of truth and beauty, exhibits the full force of the truth and beauty dynamic in her sequence. In his relationship with her, as expressed in the Mistress sequence, the Poet is the one who learns how to operate with the dynamic. The opposite is the case in the youth sequence. Here the youth is under instruction from the Poet, who imparts what he has learnt from his experiences with the Mistress. The trap for the youth is that he will mistake a semblance of beauty for the beauty that is natural to his status as a male.
        So, by introducing truth (in the guise of the Muse) and beauty into the first two sonnets of the truth and beauty dynamic to the youth, the Poet preempts the possibility of the illogicality of basing understanding on a Muse who is inspired by ‘a painted beauty to his verse’. The youth’s Muse and the painted beauty are undoubtedly forms of ideas and sensations. But a philosophy in which they are given priority would not be consistent with the derivation of truth and beauty out of the logical structuring of the whole set and the increase sonnets.
        Shakespeare applies his understanding to demonstrate the inadequacy of any system of thought that prioritises the products of the mind over the logic of the body. Uppermost in his mind would be the contradictions evident in Platonism and in the Christianity of his day.
        In line 4, the distinction drawn between the two meanings of ‘fair’ recalls the use of the word ‘fairest’ in sonnet 1. ‘Every fair’, or any sense of beauty, is distinguished from ‘his fair’, or that based on the Muse’s peculiar dynamic of truth or process of determining right and wrong. The other Muse constrains the process of determining right and wrong through making ‘a couplement of proud compare’ in seeking out instances of 'compare' that have the singularity of conventional beauty. The sun and the moon, rich gems, April showers, and the great universe, are all examples from the dynamic of truth and beauty that limit the function of truth.
        Line 9 drives the point home by introducing words derived from truth.

O let me true in love but truly write,
                                    (Sonnet 21.9)

        The Poet argues that the logic of truth and beauty is derived from the sexual process in nature. By locating his sense of truth and beauty in the increase argument the Poet knows that his determination of truth and his sense of beauty will have the necessary dynamism to fairly characterise truth and beauty as it occurs in the processes of the mind.
        The direct relation to the increase argument is established in the next two lines.

                                 my love is as fair,
As any mother’s child,
                                    (Sonnet 21.10-11)

        The Poet recognises the claim may seem mundane compared with the romanticism of the idealistic vision of the stars in the night sky.

                                 though not so bright
As those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air.
                                    (Sonnet 21.11-12)

        It is at least, though, consistent with the dynamic of the everyday world where the logical conditions for the continuation of human life exist. The Poet does not intend to forego the guiding principles of natural logic.

    I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
                                    (Sonnet 21.14)

        He will not praise something whose inherent ‘purpose’ is not to be sold or traded like common goods. The logical status of the increase/truth and beauty dynamic means it is a necessary given rather than an issue for debate. It provides the logical preconditions for the possibility of debate.
        So, in sonnets 20/21, the Poet first identifies the youth’s logical characterisation as Master Mistress in terms of male and female. His role as a male who is ‘pricked out for women’s pleasure’, is clearly delineated, and the nature of his relationship to the Poet is established. His relationship to the dynamic of truth and beauty is then considered. This (as indicated in sonnet 14 and developed in sonnet 24) involves a direct relationship with the ‘eyes’, rather than the conventional relationship with the ‘heavens’. The double dynamic of the increase argument out of nature, and the consequent truth and beauty argument, are rounded out with the conclusion in ‘any mother’s child’. The two sonnets express the necessary relation of truth and beauty to the natural principles given in the increase sonnets.
        The direct relationship between increase, as the dynamic between the male and the female in the reproduction of a child, and truth and beauty, as the dynamic between the true and the false and sensations, is drawn specifically in the two sonnets. The existence of the primary template as the overall structure of the set and two sequences, and the derivation of the Increase template from the first 14 sonnets, leads to the logical derivation of a template for truth and beauty from sonnets 20 to 154. Sonnets 20/21 indicate the form the template will take when it is drawn later in this part (see 3.121).
        The Poet’s primary mission in the Master Mistress sonnets is to give the youth the philosophic means to foster his idealistic tendencies without compromising his logical relation to the female or the Mistress and ultimately nature. The logical connection established between the male and the female and the truth and beauty dynamic in sonnets 20/21 forms the basis for Shakespeare’s capacity to write sonnets that are both aesthetically pleasing and ethically sound. The poetry and the argument are intertwined in a seamless way because they are derived consistently from the same source.
        With sonnets 20/21 the reader is at the leading edge of the seemingly unstructured series of youth sonnets that offer no groups of similar meaning before the final sonnet, 126. The structure of the whole set, plus the increase sonnets and the poetry and increase sonnets, has built a bridgehead to sonnets 20/21, the beginning of the truth and beauty sequence.
        The only apparent island, in the truth and beauty sequence to the youth, appears to be the 9 Alien Poet sonnets anchored at the middle of the set after sonnet 77 (78 to 86). But the function of the island is to address the consequences of failing to appreciate the logical conditions for having ventured thus far, or for proceeding any further. They signal that the message of the poetry and increase sonnets has to be taken heed of before substantial progress can be made.
        Interpretations of the Sonnets have all foundered in this apparent sea of indeterminacy. To approach the sonnets singularly, as Helen Vendler does dutifully in her recent book, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, invites the inconsistent interpretation by ‘key words’ that she devises. Its inconsistency in basing an interpretation on key words is indicated by the appearance of her key words in less than half the sonnets. Her acknowledgement that she does not grasp the meaning of some of the sonnets does not deter her from emending them on principles that are arbitrary or even based on philosophically inappropriate Christian dogma.
        Unless the reader’s mind is tuned to the inherent philosophic operating conditions for any mind (as presented in the 1609 Sonnets) the Sonnets will not make sense. Those conditions are enunciated logically in the sonnets up to 20/21. All meaning from thereon derives from those conditions. All discussion of themes and issues developed in sonnets 20 to 126, and sonnets 127 to 154, needs to be cognizant of the logical conditions.

3.23     Sonnet 22 and personae

It has been noted that all the substantial themes addressed in the truth and beauty sonnets appear in the introductory sonnets up to and including 20/21. Love, truth and beauty, immortality, the ideal, the eyes as the source of truth and beauty, the increase principle, poetry, art, homosexual love, nature, music, time, the seasons, selfishness, life and death, numbering, Alien Poets, the Rose and the Muse, the elements, the stars in the heavens, male and female, etc., are all introduced in the logical structuring at the beginning of the set.
        A basic relationship in the Sonnets not yet explored but crucial to an understanding of the dynamic of truth and beauty exists between the external world of the Poet and the internal world of his understanding. In the Sonnets the correct logical multiplicity is established between persons in the world and personae in the Poet’s mind.
        After the reiteration of the nature/sexual and truth and beauty dynamics in 20/21 the Poet devotes sonnet 22 to establishing his own relationship to the Master Mistress or youth. The traditional tendency to read the Sonnets as autobiography, while valid for the interpretation of the occasional reference to events contemporary with the writing of the Sonnets, takes little or no account of the youth as a persona of the Poet. The argument of the Sonnets applies equally well to the youth as to a persona of the Poet. The youth can readily be conceived as an aspect of the Poet’s progress to maturity, with the Sonnets presenting a record of that process.
        Sonnet 22, as if to make the point strongly at the beginning of the truth and beauty sequence, can be read entirely as a meditation by the Poet on his youth.

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date,
But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me,
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O therefore love be of thy self so wary,
As I not for my self, but for thee will,
Bearing thy heart which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill,
    Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,
    Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.
                                    (Sonnet 22)

        The Poet looks into his mirror (‘my glass’) and sees ‘time’s furrows’. He recognises, though, that ‘youth’ and the image in the mirror (‘youth and thou’, where the letters of thou are derived, as if with mirrors, from the word youth) have the same birth ‘date’. The youth, in the ‘glass’, is the Poet at an earlier stage in life. He later asks ironically ‘how can I then be elder than thou art?’ The couplet completes the conceit by acknowledging the Poet’s heart is the same he had as a youth. The youth literally cannot give it back to him because he has had the same heart throughout his life.
        The powerful identification of the Poet with his own youth, at this stage of the truth and beauty sequence, establishes a logical reading for all the subsequent sonnets, and reiterates the identification of the Poet with his youthful days from the earlier sonnets. Part of the intensity of the critique of youthful idealism that pervades the Sonnets and the plays could derive from Shakespeare’s own experiences as an idealistic youth. It is consistent with the philosophy of the Sonnets that Anne Hathaway, as the older and mature female partner, was instrumental in turning Shakespeare from an idealistic youth into the more circumspect Poet.
        The consistent philosophy of the Sonnets means that the Poet’s personal experience, internalised as persona, is logically coherent with his understanding of nature. Shakespeare presents his own experiences in a way that conforms to the basic conditions for the experiences of any other human being. If some of the Sonnets were originally directed at, or inspired by, a particular person or persons, by the time they were organised into the logical statement evident in Q they were made particular to the possibilities for any one person, and generalised to the possibilities for all persons. The Sonnets cannot be understood except in terms of the logical two-way dynamic between the inner components of a personality and the outer components of the world.
        The youth sonnets simultaneously present their logical dynamic in terms of a youth of the Poet’s experience and the Poet’s experience of his youth. Sonnet 22 begins a constant reiteration of the presentation of the youth as a persona of the Poet evident in other sonnets.

Let me confess that we two must be twain,
Although our undivided loves are one:
So shall those blots that do with me remain,
Without thy help, by me be borne alone.
In our two loves there is but one respect,
Though in our lives a separable spite,
Which though it alter not love’s sole effect,
Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love’s delight,
I may not ever-more acknowledge thee,
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,
Nor thou with public kindness honour me,
Unless thou take that honour from thy name:
    But do not so, I love thee in such sort,
    As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
                                    (Sonnet 36)

Oh how thy worth with manners may I sing,
When thou art all the better part of me?
What can mine own praise to mine own self bring;
And what is’t but mine own when I praise thee,
Even for this, let us divided live,
And our dear love lose name of single one,
That by this separation I may give:
That due to thee which thou deserv’st alone:
Oh absence what a torment wouldst thou prove,
Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave,
To entertain the time with thoughts of love,
Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive.
    And that thou teachest how to make one twain,
    By praising him here who doth hence remain.
                                    (Sonnet 39)

Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all,
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call,
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more:
                                    (Sonnet 40.1-4)

If I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain,
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss,
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
And both for my sake lay on me this cross,
    But here’s the joy, my friend and I are one,
    Sweet flattery, then she loves but me alone.
                                    (Sonnet 42.9-14)

Thee have I not locked up in any chest,
Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,
Within the gentle closure of my breast,
From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part,
    And even thence thou wilt be stolen I fear,
    For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.
                                    (Sonnet 48.9-14)

That God forbid, that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand th’account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure.
Oh let me suffer (being at your beck)
Th’imprisoned absence of your liberty,
And patience tame, to sufferance bide each check.
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list, your charter is so strong,
That you your self may privilege your time
To what you will, to you it doth belong,
Your self to pardon of self-doing crime.
    I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
    Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.
                                    (Sonnet 58)

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eie,
And all my soul, and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Me thinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account,
And for my self mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me my self indeed
Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self love quite contrary I read
Self, so self loving were iniquity.
    T’is thee (my self) that for my self I praise,
    Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
                                    (Sonnet 62)

When thou shalt be disposed to set me light,
And place my merit in the eye of scorn,
Upon thy side, against my self I’ll fight,
And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn:
With mine own weakness being best acquainted,
Upon thy part I can set down a story
Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted:
That thou in losing me shall win much glory:
And I by this will be a gainer too,
For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,
The injuries that to my self I do,
Doing thee vantage, double vantage me.
    Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
    That for thy right, my self will bear all wrong.
                                    (Sonnet 88)

    But do not so, I love thee in such sort,
    As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
                                    (Sonnet 96.13-14)

To me fair friend you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still:
                                    (Sonnet 104.1-3)

Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name,
So that eternal love in love’s fresh case,
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page.
    Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
    Where time and outward form would show it dead.
                                    (Sonnet 108.7-14)

O never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify,
As easy might I from my self depart,
As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love, if I have ranged,
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that my self bring water for my stain,
Never believe though in my nature reigned,
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stained,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good:
    For nothing this wide Universe I call,
    Save thou my Rose, in it thou art my all.
                                    (Sonnet 109)

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,
And that which governs me to go about,
Doth part his function, and is partly blind,
Seems seeing, but effectually is out:
For it no form delivers to the heart
Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth lack,
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:
For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,
The most sweet-savour or deform’st creature,
The mountain, or the sea, the day, or night:
The Crow, or Dove, it shapes them to your feature.
    Incapable of more replete, with you,
    My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.
                                    (Sonnet 113)

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full charactered with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain
Beyond all date even to eternity.
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist,
Til each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be missed:
                                    (Sonnet 122.1-8)

        The priority of increase over truth and beauty, or the body over the mind, implies the mind is conditioned by the logical dynamic of the body. In general terms it means the mind is conditioned by nature. By presenting the logical dynamic of his mind in terms of personae that echo the logical conditions of sexual logic in nature, Shakespeare recognises the basis of the correct multiplicity between understanding and the world. The aesthetic and ethical constitution of his mind (beauty and truth in the Sonnets) is consistent with the dynamic of truth and beauty evident in nature. The Poet’s conscience, as examined in sonnet 151, is in accord with the dynamic of ‘love’ identified in the increase sonnets.

Love is too young to know what conscience is,
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love,
                                    (Sonnet 151.1-2)

3.24     Sonnet 23 and writing

Sonnets 20/21 began by reiterating the nature/male and female dynamic, and the truth and beauty dynamic, and sonnet 22 affirmed the youth as a persona of the Poet’s older self. Now in sonnet 23, the Poet considers the implications of presenting his arguments and feelings in a book. He revisits the arguments of sonnets 15 to 19 that mediate the distinction between the physical dynamic and the presentation of ideas in poetry. He admits that presenting ideas verbally carries with it the fear of immediacy and an inability to express what is in his heart. He asks that his thoughts be accepted in written form.

As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put besides his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;
So I for fear of trust, forget to say,
The perfect ceremony of love’s rite,
And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,
O’er-charged with burthen of mine own love’s might:
O let my books be then the eloquence,
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.
    O learn to read what silent love hath writ,
    To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.
                                    (Sonnet 23)

        The translation of the Poet’s ‘love’s might’ into book form, like the difference between increase and poetry, carries with it the loss of the immediacy of the physical forces and emotions. The unavoidable condition of poetry is the impossibility of conveying the full force of the Poet’s love that rises from the depths of nature and the logic of increase. He asks that the reader make allowance for the logical difference between ‘silent love’, or the physical facts of existence, and ‘love’s fine wit’, or its expression in poetry. The image of the ‘eyes’ in the couplet mediates between the eyes of the sexual organs and the eyes of the face.

3.25     Sonnet 24 and the eyes

Sonnet 14 introduced ‘thine eyes’ as the source of truth and beauty. The relationship between the eye and the body, in which reside the mind and the heart, is critical for an appreciation of the Poet’s philosophic understanding. In sonnet 24 he develops this set of ideas and contrasts his insight, into the depths of the mind and heart, with those who ‘draw but what they see’. The relation of eye, mind, and heart, occurs frequently throughout the Sonnets.

Mine eye hath played the painter and hath steeld,
Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart,
My body is the frame wherein ‘tis held,
And perspective it is best Painter’s art.
For through the Painter must you see his skill,
To find where your true Image pictur’d lies,
Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes:
Now see what good-turns eyes for eies have done,
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
Are windows to my breast, where-through the Sun
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee.
    Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art
    They draw but what they see, know not the heart.
                                    (Sonnet 24)

        By locating the possibility, or the form, of beauty in the ‘table of his heart’, the Poet recognises the double nature of the eyes. From the heart the true form of beauty is manifested in a two-way dynamic. It is available in the eyes of the Poet and youth and is available from the sexual parts. With punning irony, the Poet notes that those who are too ‘cunning’ see only superficial beauty. They are too cunning to appreciate the significance of the cunt that logically characterises how they see.
        The words ‘eye’ and ‘eyes’ are mentioned numerous times throughout the sequence. They convey the relationship between increase and truth and beauty. Two sonnet pairs, 46 and 47 and 113 and 114, are dedicated to reiterating the relation of the logical connection between the eyes, mind, and heart.

Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,
How to divide the conquest of thy sight,
Mine eye, my heart their pictures sight would bar,
My heart, mine eye the freedom of that right,
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,
(A closet never pierced with crystal eyes)
But the defendant doth that plea deny,
And says in him their fair appearance lies.
To side this title is impaneled
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,
And by their verdict is determined
The clear eyes’ moiety, and the dear heart’s part.
    As thus, mine eye’s due is their outward part,
    And my heart’s right, their inward love of heart.
                                    (Sonnet 46)

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,
And each doth good turns now unto the other,
When that mine eye is famished for a look,
Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother;
With my love’s picture then my eye doth feast,
And to the painted banquet bids my heart:
An other time mine eye is my heart’s guest,
And in his thoughts of love doth share a part.
So either by thy picture or my love,
Thy self away, are present still with me,
For thou nor farther than my thoughts canst move,
And I am still with them, and they with thee.
    Or if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
    Awakes my heart, to heart’s and eyes’ delight.
                                    (Sonnet 47)

        Sonnet 46 contains the most blatant instance of editorial interference. Because of an ignorance of the logic of the eyes, most editors change four ‘theirs’ to ‘thys’.

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,
And that which governs me to go about,
Doth part his function, and is partly blind,
Seems seeing, but effectually is out:
For it no form delivers to the heart
Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth lack,
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:
For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,
The most sweet-savour or deform’st creature,
The mountain, or the sea, the day, or night:
The Crow, or Dove, it shapes them to your feature.
    Incapable of more replete, with you,
    My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.
                                    (Sonnet 113)

Or whether doth my mind being crown’d with you
Drink up the monarch’s plague this flattery?
Or whether shall I say mine eie saith true,
And that your love-taught it this Alchemy?
To make of monsters, and things indigest,
Such cherubines as your sweet self resemble,
Creating every bad a perfect best
As fast as objects to his beams assemble:
Oh ’tis the first, ’tis flatry in my seeing,
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up,
Mine eie well knows what with his gust is greeing,
And to his pallet doth prepare the cup.
    If it be poisoned, tis the lesser sin,
    That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.
                                    (Sonnet 114)

        Sonnet 113 contains one of the most notorious emendations with the word ‘lack’ changed in most modern editions to ‘latch’. Significantly these sonnets contain the ‘eye, mind, heart’, dynamic, which has caused problems for editors since Malone in 1790. For a fuller treatment see Volume 2.

3.26     Sonnets 25 and 26 and stars

Sonnets 25 and 26 are not a logically connected pair, but they do examine the two aspects of the ‘stars’ considered in sonnet 14. Sonnet 25, like the octet of sonnet 14, considers those who look to the stars in the sky for favour or fortune. Sonnet 26 then brings the focus from the heavenly stars to the ‘constant stars’ that are ‘thine eyes’ from the sestet of sonnet 14.

Let those who are in favour with their stars,
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I whom fortune of such triumph bars
Unlooked for joy in that I honour most;
Great Princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread,
But as the Marigold at the sun’s eye,
And in them-selves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior famoused for worth,
After a thousand victories once foiled,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:
    Then happy I that love and am beloved
    Where I may not remove, nor be removed.
                                    (Sonnet 25)

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit;
To thee I send this written ambassage
To witness duty, not to show my wit.
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it;
But that I hope some good conceit of thine
In thy soul’s thought (all naked) will bestow it:
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
And puts apparel on my tottered loving,
To show me worthy of their sweet respect,
    Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee,
    Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.
                                    (Sonnet 26)

        In line 26.10, ‘Til whatsoever star that guides my moving’, the Poet addresses the youth, whose eyes are identified in sonnet 14 as the source of truth and beauty. The transition is made from the inappropriate starry skies to the youth’s eyes. They are the eyes of line 12 that ‘show me worthy of their sweet respect’. Most editors emend ‘their’ to ‘thy’ because they do not appreciate the relation of the stars and eyes. The ‘their’ in line 12 refers to both the ‘eyes’ of the ‘whatsoever star’ in line 9.
        Sonnet 116 provides a further example where ‘star’ refers to the ‘constant stars’ of sonnet 14. ‘The marriage of true minds’ is possible because, although the metaphor of stars derives from the heavens, the images of the sonnet are from the human physiognomy. The ‘ever fixed mark’ is a ‘star’ that ‘looks’ (as with eyes) on tempests. The image of the face is then eroticised in the ‘rosy lips and cheeks’ which ‘come’ within ‘bending sickle’s compass’. The truth and beauty dynamic, which derives from the physical eye ‘whose height be taken’, is evident in the youth’ eyes.

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 wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Times 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.
                                    (Sonnet 116)

3.27     Sonnets 27, 28, 43 and 61 as consecutive sonnets

It should be evident that below the level of the truth and beauty dynamic the occurrence of the many concepts and themes in sonnets 20/21 onward is not systematic. Logically, sonnets that use images such as the eyes or the issue of personae cannot be categorised. If the sonnets were rearranged according to such ideas, issues of inclusion and exclusion would predominate. Because a variety of themes are addressed in any one sonnet, all Shakespeare needs to do is to ensure that all the issues he wants to be considered are presented at least at some point in the sequence and the sense of consistency and comprehensiveness is assured.
        An illustration of the freedom allowed by adherence to the logical conditions of the whole set and two parts and the first 19 sonnets, is the placement of sonnets 43 and 61 in relation to the sonnet pair 27/28. More interesting than the pair itself is the fact that any doubt as to the meaning of sonnets 27/28 (as to what the Poet sees or doesn’t see) is resolved in sonnet 43 and further confirmed in sonnet 61.
        Sonnets 27 and 28 consider the effect of the Poet gazing open eyed into the blackness of the night.

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired,
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired.
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee;
And keep my drooping eye-lids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see.
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents their shadow to my sightless view,
Which like a jewel (hung in ghastly night)
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
    Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,
    For thee, and for my self, no quiet find.
                                    (Sonnet 27)

How can I then return in happy plight
That am debarred the benefit of rest?
When day’s oppression is not eased by night,
But day by night and night by day oppressed.
And each (though enemies to either’s reign)
Do in consent shake hands to torture me,
The one by toil, the other to complain
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
I tell the Day to please him thou art bright,
And do’st him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:
So flatter I the swart complexioned night,
When sparkling stars twire not thou guil’st the even.
    But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,
    And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger.
                                    (Sonnet 28)

        In sonnet 27, the Poet is lying in bed with eyes open wide, seeing nothing but absolute blackness. Even the efforts of the ‘eyes’ of his ‘soul’s imaginary sight’ produce nothing more than ‘their shadow’, or a black on blackness. Like trying to see a ‘black jewel’ in ‘ghastly night’ his soul’s eyes see nothing. The Poet’s desire to call up the image of the youth is thwarted by his inability to evoke an image of the youth before his eyes in the darkness outside. Hence in the couplet by day or night he can ‘no quiet find’.
        Sonnet 28 continues the theme of his inability to see the youth day or night. This time he attempts to imagine the youth is a star, but one not visible in the starless sky. He says he ‘flatters the swart complexioned night’ as if to deceive the night in his desperation to see an image of the youth. But again both by day and night his sorrow and grief merely get stronger.
        Sonnet 43 confirms the reading of sonnets 27 and 28, because in sonnet 43 the Poet falls asleep and dreams and it is only in his dream that the image of the youth appears. If sonnet 43 had followed sonnets 27/28, then the traditional commentators’ assertions about what the Poet ‘sees’ could have been clarified immediately. But Shakespeare delays the impact of sonnet 43 until later in the sequence to intensify the effect so that once seen the connection is not forgotten.
        Shakespeare has the bonus of demonstrating that a strict ordering is logically impossible, as well as anticipating the futile attempts to reorder the Sonnets over the last 400 years. Editors’ ignorance that the logical conditions for truth and beauty (established in the early sonnets) has implications for the ordering of the truth and beauty sonnets is a fatal fault.

When I most 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,
And 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,
When to un-seeing eyes thy shade shines so?
How would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made,
By looking on thee in the living day?
When in dead night their fair imperfect shade,
Through 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.
                                    (Sonnet 43)

        It is of no small moment that sonnets 27 and 43 carry some of the unnecessary ‘their’ to ‘thy’ emendations that mar modern editions since Malone in 1790. As with sonnet 26, editors are wrong to substitute ‘thy’ for ‘their’ at both 27.10 and 43.11. The crucial vehicle for love and worth are the eyes (their) and not the external appearance of the youth (thy).
        Sonnet 61 asks the question, implied in sonnets 27 and 28, as to the source of the expectation that an image appear in the dark to the Poet’s open ‘eyelids’. The ‘shadows’ the Poet anticipates, though, are due to his wishful thinking affected by the desires of youth. In the sestet of sonnet 61, he affirms that it is his own watchful ‘love’ that creates the shadows in the dark.

Is it thy will, thy Image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
Is it thy spirit that thou send’st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenure of thy Jealousy?
O no, thy love though much, is not so great,
It is my love that keeps mine eie awake,
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
To play the watch-man ever for thy sake.
    For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
    From me far off, with others all too near.
                                    (Sonnet 61)

3.28     Sonnets 29 and 30 and the priority of increase

Sonnets 29 and 30 revisit the priority of increase over desires for another world. The Poet bemoans the travails of age and station and wealth. He knows the vitality of youth, or the love that has its basis in the certainty of the birth of all living persons, is the true wealth and salve to sorrows. The ‘eyes’ perform their double role of centring the Poet so that, even though he represents himself as downcast and outcast, he still writes with truth and beauty derived from the potential of the youth’s active eye.

When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my out-cast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate.
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the Lark at the break of day arising)
From sullen earth sings hymns at Heaven’s gate,
    For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
    That then I scorn to change my state with Kings.
                                    (Sonnet 29)

When to the Sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye (un-used to flow)
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep a fresh love’s long since cancelled woe,
And moan th’expense of many a vanished sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances fore-gone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
    But if the while I think on thee (dear friend)
    All losses are restored, and sorrows end.
                                    (Sonnet 30)

3.29     Sonnet 31 and the cost of idealism

Occasionally in the sequence Shakespeare reveals his concern about the costs contingent on a contradictory formulation of the truth and beauty dynamic. In sonnet 31, the cost of ‘dear religious love’ is addressed. Mention has been made of the contradictions that would have been apparent to Shakespeare in the religious beliefs of his day. The feuding Protestants and Catholics could not both have been in possession of the one true God. The truth and beauty dynamic in the youth sequence prepares the youth for a consistent critique of such possibilities.
        Sonnet 31 mentions hearts and eyes, and addresses the youth as the Poet’s persona.

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
Which I by lacking have supposed dead,
And there reigns Love and all Love’s loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye,
As interest of the dead, which now appear,
But things removed that hidden in there lie.
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give,
That due of many, now is thine alone.
    Their images I loved, I view in thee,
    And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.
                                    (Sonnet 31)

        Other sonnets express the same sentiment.

That God forbid, that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
…
    I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
    Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.
                                    (Sonnet 58.1-14)

How many Lambs might the stern Wolf betray,
If like a Lamb he could his looks translate.
How many gazers mightst thou lead away
If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state?
    But do not so, I love thee in such sort,
    As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
                                    (Sonnet 96.9-14)

Like widowed wombs after their Lord’s decease:
Yet this abundant issue seemed to me,
But hope of Orphans, and un-fathered fruit,
                                    (Sonnet 97.8-10)

Let not my love be called Idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an Idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
…
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
    Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone.
    Which three till now, never kept seat in one.
                                    (Sonnet 105.1-14)

No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change,
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,
They are but dressings of a former sight:
                                    (Sonnet 123.1-4)

        While not in the youth sequence, the most devastating attack on the consequences of idealistic inconsistency occurs in sonnet 129.

Th’expense of Spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action, and till action, lust
Is perjured, murdrous, bloody full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
Made In pursuit and in possession so,
Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme,
A bliss in proof and proud and very woe,
Before a joy proposed behind a dream,
    All this the world well knows yet none knows well,
    To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
                                    (Sonnet 129)

        Commentators who read sonnets like 129 as Christian sonnets have attempted to blunt the force of the denunciations by willfully misreading their content, or by suggesting Shakespeare wrote them when unhinged by the effects of illicit love.

3.30     Sonnet 32 and the Alien Poet

While the Alien Poet group (78 to 86) gives extended treatment to the logical status of inferior poets, sonnet 32 not only mentions the Muse (the first mention since sonnet 21) it contrasts the genuine love evident in the verse of the Poet and the writing of lesser poets who have only rhyme and style to recommend them. The Alien Poets represent those who, unlike the Poet, do not appreciate the dynamic of truth and beauty. They protect institutional inconsistency and represent the potential inconsistency to which the youth is susceptible if he does not take the Poet’s advice about heeding natural logic. Sonnet 32 prepares the way for the logical relation of the Poet’s and Aliens’ Muses in sonnet 38.

If thou survive my well contented day,
When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey:
These poor rude lines of thy deceased Lover:
Compare them with the bettering of the time,
And though they be out-stripped by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
Oh then vouchsafe me but this loving thought,
Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought
To march in ranks of better equipage:
    But since he died and Poets better prove,
    Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love.
                                    (Sonnet 32)

3.31     Sonnets 33, 34, 35, the ideal in truth and beauty

Sonnets 33 to 35 explore the ‘endless jar’ between ‘right and wrong’. In sonnet 33 the sovereign Sun promises glory, but has no control over the cloud that masks his show. If the God of the sky cannot sustain the ideal conditions, then neither can it be expected of the inhabitants of the world.
        Sonnet 34 reverses the process, but now in human terms. The idealistic youth has the capacity to ‘ransom all ill deeds’, even when a storm can produce ‘tears that are pearl’. The truth and beauty dynamic is a perpetual process of sensations and evaluations that has its anchor, not self referentially in truth or beauty, but in the increase dynamic with its connection to nature. This is expressed in the last two lines where the colouring of the rain or tears is the milky white of pearl. The sexual metaphor drives home the logical connection to the initial structuring of the Sonnets.

Full many a glorious morning have I seen,
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green;
Guilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy:
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride,
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my Sun one early morn did shine,
With all triumphant splendour on my brow,
But out alack, he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath masked him from me now.
    Yet him for this, my love no whit distaineth,
    Suns of the world may stain, when heaven’s sun staineth.
                                    (Sonnet 33)

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke.
Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak,
That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief,
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss,
Th’offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence’s loss.
    Ah but those tears are pearl which thy love sheeds,
    And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.
                                    (Sonnet 34)

        Sonnet 35 addresses the nature of the ideal even more explicitly. The Rose, not mentioned since its appearance in sonnet 1, reappears after the focus of the previous two sonnets on the relation between the ideal and its antithesis. In the Sonnets, the Rose epitomises beauty and the Poet uses its beauty to evoke a sensation of the ideal. And the underbelly of the Rose, with its canker and thorns, represents the logic of the dynamic between beauty and truth.
        The sonnet sympathises that ‘All men’, like the Rose, ‘make faults’. Just as the Poet is prepared to excuse the sins of those men (‘their sins’) more than their due, he is prepared to authorise the youth’s ‘trespass’. Like the ‘clouds and eclipses that stain both Moon and Sun’, love and hate, right and wrong, are part of the dynamic of life.

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done,
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,
Clouds and eclipses stain both Moon and Sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
My self corrupting salving thy amiss,
Excusing their sins more than their sins are:
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,
Thy adverse party is thy Advocate,
And ’gainst my self a lawful plea commence,
Such civil war is in my love and hate,
    That I an accessory needs must be,
    To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.
                                    (Sonnet 35)

        Because most editors imagine a romance between Shakespeare and a youth, and do not appreciate the logic of Shakespeare’s representation of truth and beauty, they emend one or both of the ‘theirs’ in line 8.

3.32     Sonnet 37 and truth and beauty

Sonnet 37 mentions both truth and beauty for the first time since they appeared together in sonnet 14 of the increase argument and sonnet 17 in the poetry and increase sonnets. The Poet, who represents himself as ‘made lame by Fortune’s dearest spite’, takes his comfort in the youth’s ‘worth and truth’. He qualifies this by saying that all the attributes (including the conventional sense of beauty) are ‘entitled in their parts’ to be the youth’s crowning glory. But the line ‘I make my love engrafted to this store’, signals that youth’s love is grounded in the increase dynamic. ‘Store’ characterises the youth’s sexual potential (see sonnets 11 and 14).

As a decrepit father takes delight,
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by Fortune’s dearest spite
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
Or any of these all, or all, or more
Intitled in their parts, do crowned sit,
I make my love engrafted to this store:
So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,
Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give,
That I in thy abundance am sufficed,
And by a part of all thy glory live:
    Look what is best, that best I wish in thee,
    This wish I have, then ten times happy me.
                                    (Sonnet 37)

3.33     Sonnet 38 and the relation of 9, 1, and 10

The ‘ten’ in the last line of sonnet 37 is the numerological consequence of locating the natural source of the youth’s various attributes in the increase dynamic. The number relationship is made explicit in sonnet 38. The Poet’s Muse, who represents the natural dynamic of understanding available to the youth, is added to the ‘old nine which rhymers invocate’ to create the complete or logical understanding of the dynamic of truth and beauty.
        The numerology or the ‘eternal numbers’ of the Sonnets presents the logical relation between the male (9), the female (1) and nature (1) and hence the logical relation between truth and beauty. The 9 characterises the youth who does not understand the logical connection to the Mistress and so to increase. The 1 represents the potential of the youth to arrive at the same understanding as the Poet, hence ‘my Muse’. Together they add up to 10 in conformity with the numerological pattern of the Sonnets.

How can my Muse want subject to invent
While thou dost breathe that pour’st into my verse,
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent,
For every vulgar paper to rehearse:
Oh give thy self the thanks if ought in me,
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight,
For who’s so dumb that cannot write to thee,
When thou thy self dost give invention light?
Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate,
And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth
Eternal numbers to out-live long date.
    If my slight Muse do please these curious days,
    The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.
                                    (Sonnet 38)

        The Muse or Muses only occur in the truth and beauty dynamic to the youth. Sonnet 32 establishes her connection to the Alien Poets, while sonnet 38 configures her in terms of truth and beauty and the numerology of the Sonnets. The Muse is next mentioned in the Alien Poet group (78 to 86) where she appears five times. The Poet again addresses the inadequacy of the 9 Muses of old and the logical relation to increase that generates the Poet’s Muse. These sonnets are considered in detail in the section on the Rose and the Muse (see 3.92) and the section on the mythic Poet (see 4.25).
        The final references to the Muse occur in sonnets 100 to 103. The Muse appears three times in sonnet 100, the sonnet whose number is 10 times 10 recalling the ‘ten times happy’ of sonnet 37 and the ‘ten times more’ of sonnet 38. Numerologically a unity, sonnet 100 mentions ‘gentle numbers’ echoing the ‘eternal numbers’ of sonnet 38 to which sonnet 79 of the Alien Poet group adds ‘gracious numbers’. The word ‘numbers’ refers both to ‘verses’ of poetry and to their numerological organisation.

Where art thou Muse that thou forget’st so long,
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light.
Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,
In gentle numbers time so idly spent,
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,
And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
Rise resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey,
If time have any wrinkle graven there,
If any, be a Satire to decay,
And make times spoils despised every where.
    Give my love fame faster than time wastes life,
    So thou prevent’st his scythe, and crooked knife.
                                    Sonnet 100)

        Then sonnet 101, considered previously for its explicit statement of the dynamic of truth and beauty, mentions the Muse three times. When it is realised the Rose is mentioned in sonnets 98 and 99, the concentration of sonnets relating to truth and beauty around the number 100 is obviously intentional. If Shakespeare was aware of the 100 cantos of Dante’s Divine Comedy, then it would seem, in the sonnets around 100, he redresses the inconsistent representation of life and death and art and morality in the Divine Comedy. In sonnets 98 to 101 he provides the logical relationship of truth and beauty out of the dynamic of birth in life.

Oh truant Muse what shall be thy amends,
For thy neglect of truth in beauty died?
Both truth and beauty on my love depends:
So doth thou too, and therein dignified:
Make answer Muse, wilt thou not haply say,
Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,
Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay:
But best is best, if never intermixed.
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so, for’t lies in thee,
To make him much out-live a gilded tomb:
And to be praised of ages yet to be.
    Then do thy office Muse, I teach thee how,
    To make him seem long hence, as he shows now.
                                    (Sonnet 101)

3.34     Sonnets 41 and 42, the youth and the Mistress

The idea that the Master Mistress is pricked out for ‘women’s pleasure’ (20.13) is developed in sonnets 41 and 42. Because the purpose of the youth sonnets is to demonstrate the Master Mistress’ logical relationship to the Mistress, sonnet 41 first considers the influence on the youth of a woman of their mutual acquaintance.
        A youth, who merely lusts, even though he follows his physical inclinations, does not understand that the Mistress is the source of beauty and truth. The youth is tempted to the Mistress by her beauty, but simply for the sake of her beauty, even to the point of persisting despite her ‘woes’ at his insistence. The Poet accuses him of being false, because in his youthful ignorance, he is false to the principles of truth and beauty the Poet has been attempting to instill in him.

Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
When I am some-time absent from thy heart,
Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits,
For still temptation follows where thou art.
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed.
And when a woman woes, what woman’s son,
Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed.
Aye me, but yet thou might’st my seat forbear,
And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,
Who lead thee in their riot even there
Where thou art forced to break a two-fold truth:
    Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
    Thine by thy beauty being false to me.
                                    (Sonnet 41)

        Sonnet 42 resolves the dilemma by reverting to the logic that the youth and the Mistress are also personae of the Poet. If the dilemma is viewed in the light of the unity of the Poet’s personae, or his inner selves, a resolution is affected by the combination of ‘friend’ and Mistress, and then the combination of them both with the Poet. Logically they were ‘one’ all along. The internal resolution establishes the precedent for a resolution between the external protagonists.

That thou hast her it is not all my grief,
And yet it may be said I loved her dearly,
That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye,
Thou dost love her, because thou know’st I love her,
And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her,
If I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain,
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss,
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
And both for my sake lay on me this cross,
    But here’s the joy, my friend and I are one,
    Sweet flattery, then she loves but me alone.
                                    (Sonnet 42)

3.35     Sonnets 44 and 45 and the four elements

Sonnets 44 and 45 are unique in the set. They are united as a pair by the four Aristotelian elements. ‘Earth and water’ feature in sonnet 44, and ‘air and fire’ in sonnet 45. It is as if Shakespeare acknowledges his indebtedness to Aristotle by taking the opportunity to characterise the logical relation between the physicality of the ‘flesh’ (earth and water) and the imaginative power of ‘thought’ or ‘desire’ (air and fire). Shakespeare uses the arbitrariness of Aristotle’s four elements to demonstrate the natural logic of the body/ mind relationship. The flesh, or the sexual, and desire, or the erotic, are logically distinct but also necessary components of the logical dynamic of human life.

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way,
For then despite of space I would be brought,
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay,
No matter then although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth removed from thee,
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,
As soon as think the place where he would be.
But ah, thought kills me that I am not thought
To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
But that so much of earth and water wrought,
I must attend, times leisure with my moan.
    Receiving naughts by elements so slow,
    But heavy tears, badges of either’s woe.
                                    (Sonnet 44)

The other two, slight air, and purging fire,
Are both with thee, where ever I abide,
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present absent with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker Elements are gone
In tender Embassy of love to thee,
My life being made of four, with two alone,
Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy.
Until lives’ composition be recured,
By those swift messengers returned from thee,
Who even but now come back again assured,
Of their fair health, recounting it to me.
    This told, I joy, but then no longer glad,
    I send them back again and straight grow sad.
                                    (Sonnet 45)

        Most editors, in their predilection for an idealised youth in Shakespeare’s personal life, do not see that the ‘their’ in line 12 of 45 refers to the two elements, air and fire.

3.36     Sonnets 46 and 47, the eyes and heart

Sonnets 46 and 47 are considered in 3.25 and 3.115.

3.37     Sonnets 48 and 49, personae

Sonnet 48 was considered, along with sonnet 22, for the ease with which it can be read as a statement about a youth as the Poet’s friend, or as a reflection on the Poet’s youthful days. Sonnet 49 presents a variation on the theme.
        The decision not to consider all sonnets in this examination of the truth and beauty dynamic in the youth sonnets, is no reflection on their intrinsic worth. Their worth does not reside in the poetry but in the logical dynamic articulated at the beginning of the set. Shakespeare’s awareness of this is expressed explicitly in sonnets such as 55 where he states that the ‘content’ of the poetry is enduring and not its rhyme or style.

3.38     Sonnets 50, 51 and 52, the journey to maturity

Three sonnets that could have been included in the sample illustrating the presence of the Poet’s personae in the set are the logically connected trio 50 to 52. They are considered together here to emphasise the importance of respecting the logical connections between individual sonnets in determining their meaning. The older Poet, completely at ease in his philosophic understanding, humorously imagines his body to be a sluggish beast of burden in relationship to his younger self, or to youth in general.
        Youth and age are in a logical dynamic in which age is aware of its youthful days and youth is idealistically ignorant of the wisdom of age. Both are required for the possibility of increase and the possibility of poetry. The Poet’s argument, with its consistent logic, is the sign of a fully mature human being. Shakespeare, in the consistent philosophy presented in the Sonnets and its application in the dramatics of his plays, knows why he is pre-eminent over others.
        In sonnets 50 and 51, the Poet imagines his body is a weary beast that bears him away from his youth. Because youth is logically the source of love, the journey away is tedious compared with the sense of immediacy the Poet feels for his youthful days. In sonnet 52, he abstracts the lessons from the metaphor of the horse, concluding that the connection to youth (and the potential for love based in the logic of increase) brings triumph, whereas dissociation from youthful potential brings a lack of hope.

How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek (my weary travel’s end)
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say
Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods duly on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider loved not speed being made from thee:
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That some-times anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side,
    For that same groan doth put this in my mind,
    My grief lies onward and my joy behind.
                                    (Sonnet 50)

Thus can my love excuse the slow offence,
Of my dull bearer, when from thee I speed,
From where thou art, why should I haste me thence,
Till I return of posting is no need.
O what excuse will my poor beast then find,
When swift extremity can seem but slow,
Then should I spur though mounted on the wind,
In winged speed no motion shall I know,
Then can no horse with my desire keep pace,
Therefore desire (of perfects love being made)
Shall neigh no dull flesh in his fiery race,
But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade,
    Since from thee going he went wilful slow,
    Towards thee I’ll run, and give him leave to go.
                                    (Sonnet 51)

So am I as the rich whose blessed key,
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
Since seldom coming in the long year set,
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
Or captain Jewels in the carconet.
So is the time that keeps you as my chest,
Or as the ward-robe which the robe doth hide,
To make some special instant special blest,
By new unfolding his imprisoned pride.
    Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope,
    Being had to triumph, being lacked to hope.
                                    (Sonnet 52)

3.39     Sonnet 53 and increase by the millions

The increase argument is never far from the surface in the truth and beauty sonnets. In sonnet 53, the youth’s idealistic imagination is compared to the mythical Adonis who, like the mythical Christ, underwent death and resurrection, and Helen who, as the daughter of the Greek god Zeus, did not know natural increase. As mythical beings they only have one ‘shadow’ and that is their own. By contrast, the youth, whose shadow is like the spring, and whose capacity for shadows is like the autumn (‘the foison of the year’) has millions of ‘strange shadows’, or progenitors and descendants as his potential. His ‘constant heart’ is tied logically to the process of increase.

What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one, hath every one, one shade,
And you but one, can every shadow lend:
Describe Adonis and the counterfeit,
Is poorly imitated after you,
On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
The other as your bounty doth appear,
And you in every blessed shape we know.
    In all external grace you have some part,
    But you like none, none you for constant heart.
                                    (Sonnet 53)

3.40     Sonnet 54 and truth and beauty

Sonnet 54 mentions both truth and beauty. Shakespeare appreciates that the logic of beauty is nothing without the correlated logic of truth. Truth and beauty, derived as they are from the increase dynamic in nature (or the possibility of love as defined in sonnet 9), are logically inseparable. If beauty is considered alone it is nothing compared to the ‘beauteous beauty’ of the full dynamic, when beauty is related to truth.
        The Poet also returns to the image of the Rose to convey his meaning. In sonnet 35, the ideal form of the Rose was characterised as hiding the thorns that act to contradict the permanence of the ideal. In sonnet 54, the Poet chooses not a hidden feature of the Rose, but a regular feature distinct from its visual beauty, its ‘sweet odour’. Beauty, in the consistent philosophy of the Sonnets, is any singular sensation unmediated by thought. By introducing a second sensation, that of smell, the possibility of evaluation, or the determination between true and false, arises. Only on the basis of conscious comparison can ‘we deem it fairer’, or participate in the dynamic of truth.
        The Poet then characterises the ideal, where no discrimination is possible, as ‘Canker blooms’ whose only virtue is their ‘show’. Like the ideal (Adonis), these blooms ‘die to themselves’. The ‘sweet Roses’, when they die, because they conform to the logic of truth and beauty out of the increase sonnets, continue to produce the ‘sweetest odours’ or offspring. The ‘beauteous and lovely youth’, as the ideal young man, requires the odour, or discrimination through the Poet’s verse, to remind him of his logical relation to the dynamic of truth.
        Editors have emended the ‘by’ to ‘my’ (54.14) in their mistaken desire to have the youth immortalised in the Poet’s verse, rather than the ‘verse’ being the logical vehicle for the articulation of the logic of truth to complement the logic of beauty.

Oh how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give,
The Rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour, which doth in it live:
The Canker blooms have full as deep a dye,
As the perfumed tincture of the Roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,
When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:
But for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwooed, and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet Roses do not so,
Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:
    And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
    When that shall vade, by verse distils your truth.
                                    (Sonnet 54)

3.41     Sonnet 55 and the content of verse

Sonnet 54 has just reiterated the dynamic of truth and beauty, out of the logical structuring of the Sonnets in terms of nature and the sexual possibility and the increase dynamic. In sonnet 55, the dynamic is presented as the inalienable ‘content’ of the Sonnets about which the youth must make a ‘judgment’ as to whether he will allow his naive idealism to mature.
        The sonnet recognises the temporal nature of human monuments. It puts forward, in their place, the ‘content’ of its verse, or the arguments established in the structure of the whole set and the increase sonnets, based on the ‘living record’ that, as long as humans are alive, provides the logical conditions for their survival. The Poet knows this is the dynamic the youth lives by at any rate. It ‘dwells in lover’s eyes’ or the logical connection between truth and beauty and increase presented in sonnet 14. Sonnet 55 is examined again when the issue of immortality is considered (see 4.21).

Not marble, nor the guilded monument,
Of Princes shall out-live this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall Statues over-turn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor wars quick fire shall burn:
The living record of your memory.
’Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
    So till the judgment that your self arise,
    You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.
                                    (Sonnet 55)

3.42     Sonnets 57 to 60, and 63 to 65, sonnets to time

Sonnets 57 to 60, and then sonnets 63 to 65, meditate on the passage of time. Only through the process of increase can time be cheated and the ‘content’ of the Poet’s verse be vindicated by future generations.

Being your slave what should I do but tend,
Upon the hours, and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend;
Nor services to do till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world without end hour,
Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,
When you have bid your servant once adieu.
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought,
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But like a sad slave stay and think of nought
Save where you are, how happy you make those.
    So true a fool is love, that in your Will,
    (Though you do any thing) he thinks no ill.
                                    Sonnet 57)

That God forbid, that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand th’account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure.
Oh let me suffer (being at your beck)
Th’imprisoned absence of your liberty,
And patience tame, to sufferance bide each check.
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list, your charter is so strong,
That you your self may privilege your time
To what you will, to you it doth belong,
Your self to pardon of self-doing crime.
    I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
    Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.
                                    (Sonnet 58)

        One of the great ironies of Sonnet editorship is the removal of the capital G from ‘God’ (as is done in sonnet 58), where a blasphemy is suspected. Shakespeare seems to take pleasure in conforming to the requirement to give God his due regardless of the religion. He seems also to take delight in breaking the rules when they are arbitrary. The use of capitals on many words within the Sonnets that might not otherwise require a capital has disconcerted most editors whose penchant for conventional order overcomes their respect for the text.
        Only certain words in the set are capitalised throughout. As proper names the Poet, the Mistress (except sonnet 153), the Master Mistress, the Rose, the Muse, and God, are accorded this distinction. Other words of significance such as nature, time, art, truth and beauty, appear in both upper and lower case. The word increase (as a process) appears in the lower case, and the ‘sovereign mistress’ is also given a lower case to forestall any temptation to establish her as the ‘Goddess’ of Nature.
        The seeming arbitrariness of the capitalisation is consistent with the need to continually recognise the fundamental importance of the ‘content’ of the Sonnets. No precondition is as important in Shakespeare’s mind as the logic of human persistence in nature. The simple requirement is the basis for any other possibility, so that all other possibilities are treated with the necessary circumspection. They are not given attributes they do not warrant.

If there be nothing new, but that which is,
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
Which labouring for invention bear amiss
The second burthen of a former child?
Oh that record could with a back-ward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the Sun,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done.
That I might see what the old world could say,
To this composed wonder of your frame,
Whether we are mended, or where better they,
Or whether revolution be the same.
    Oh sure I am the wits of former days,
    To subjects worse have given admiring praise.
                                    (Sonnet 59)

        Sonnet 60 conforms to the time pattern of 12s structured in the layout of the Sonnets. Time, as a conceptual construct, can only ‘feed on the rarities of nature’s truth’. It has no purchase on the ultimate continuation of the human possibility through increase. The beauty of the youth persists through the generations, whereas time remains a conceptual construct of the truth dynamic.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight,
And time that gave, doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
    And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
    Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
                                    (Sonnet 60)

        Sonnets 63 to 65 continue the critique of time with recurring images of ‘Spring’ (63.8), ‘increase’ and ‘store’ (64.8), and the ironical acceptance that by a ‘miracle’ the Poet’s ‘black ink’ (65.14) will survive into the future.

Against my love shall be as I am now
With time’s injurious hand crushed and o’er-worn,
When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow
With lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn
Hath traveled on to Age’s steepy night,
And all those beauties whereof now he’s King
Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his Spring.
For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding Age’s cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life.
    His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
    And they shall live, and he in them still green.
                                    (Sonnet 63)

When I have seen by time’s fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age,
When sometime lofty towers I see down razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage.
When I have seen the hungry Ocean gain
Advantage on the Kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store,
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded, to decay,
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
That Time will come and take my love away.
    This thought is as a death which cannot choose
    But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.
                                    (Sonnet 64)

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O how shall summer’s honey breath hold out,
Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?
O fearful meditation, where alack,
Shall time’s best Jewel from time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,
Or who his spoil or beauty can forbid?
    O none, unless this miracle have might,
    That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
                                    (Sonnet 65)

3.43     Sonnet 62 and truth and beauty

Sonnet 62 is set amongst sonnets 57 to 65, whose principal theme is the victory of the ‘content’ of the Poet’s verse over time, and immediately after sonnet 61, whose theme relates directly to sonnets 27/28 and 43. It anchors the various themes with another presentation of the truth and beauty dynamic.
        The Poet begins by acknowledging that the ‘sin of self-love’ possesses all his ‘eye’ and ‘soul’ and is ‘grounded inward in my heart’. In sonnet 24 and others the Poet found truth and beauty in the logical connection between the eye, heart, and soul. The connection between the eye of the face, and that of the sexual organs, enables him to express the relationship between the body and the mind consistently.
        The tendency to self-regard, addressed in the increase sonnets, is a failing of the idealistic youth. The Poet recognises the potential for his youthful self to influence the behaviour of his mature self. This possibility seems to be confirmed when he compares his face, shape and worth, to ‘all others’. The Poet identifies the possibility of determining truth with the process of thinking. The discriminatory faculty is under threat, in this instance, from the singularity associated with self-love derived from an illogical attitude toward increase.
        The logic of truth is made evident when the Poet looks in the mirror and compares the illusion created by his youthful persona with his aged features. Self-love is an ‘iniquity’ because the inclinations of youth, if unchecked by philosophic maturity, lead to the sort of iniquities apparent in the idealistic, or immature, faith practised in the Christian sects of Shakespeare’s day. The Poet recognises the error of ‘painting his age’ with the singular beauty of youth.

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
And all my soul, and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Me thinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account,
And for my self mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me my self indeed
Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self love quite contrary I read
Self, so self loving were iniquity.
    ’Tis thee (my self) that for my self I praise,
    Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
                                    (Sonnet 62)

3.44     Sonnets 63 and 65, the theme of poetry and life

The relationship between lines of poetry and lines of life, established so exquisitely in sonnet 18, recurs a number of times throughout the truth and beauty sonnets. In sonnets 63, 65, and 67 the contrast is drawn between black lines, black ink, ‘waste blacks’, and the greenness of life, the brightness of life, and ‘those children nursed, delivered from thy brain’. The Poet is conscious that poetry is an activity that is part of life but is equally conscious that poetry alone will not ensure the continuation of life. Sonnets 63 to 65 explore the two possibilities.

Against my love shall be as I am now
With time’s injurious hand crushed and o’er-worn,
When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow
With lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn
Hath traveled on to Age’s steepy night,
And all those beauties whereof now he’s King
Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his Spring.
For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding Age’s cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life.
    His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
    And they shall live, and he in them still green.
                                    (Sonnet 63)

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O how shall summer’s honey breath hold out,
Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?
O fearful meditation, where alack,
Shall time’s best Jewel from time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,
Or who his spoil or beauty can forbid?
    O none, unless this miracle have might,
    That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
                                    (Sonnet 65)

3.45     Sonnet 66 and truth

The recurrence of the truth and beauty dynamic in sonnet 62, within the general theme of time across sonnets 57 to 65, highlights the inconsistency of traditional expectations that truth is a singular state associated with the possibility of an ideal God. Something of Shakespeare’s determination to correct the idealistic misunderstanding is recorded in the unique form of sonnet 66. Of all the sonnets it least obeys the regular division into quatrains and couplet, and accentuates its distinctiveness with a litany of ‘ands’.

Tir’d with all these for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy Nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And Folly (Doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple-Truth miscalled Simplicity,
And captive-good attending Captain ill.
    Tir’d with all these, from these would I be gone,
    Save that to die, I leave my love alone.
                                    (Sonnet 66)

        The Poet represents himself as ‘tired’ of all the inconsistencies in the understanding of truth in traditional philosophy. In the crucial line in sonnet 66, the Poet laments that ‘simple Truth’ is ‘miscalled Simplicity’ (66.11). The idealisation of ‘Truth’ disregards the logic that ‘ideal truth’ can only be a singular sensation or a form of ‘beauty’. What should be simply understood as the dynamic of true and false is rendered simplistic. Line 12 affirms that truth is the process of determination between ‘good’ and ‘ill’. The logic of nature and the increase argument is the foundation on which the dynamic of truth and beauty is grounded. A singular locus for truth, as in the absolute goodness of a male God, or an abstract ideal, distorts the logic and renders truth vulnerable to edict or opinion.
        The process of comparison (‘shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’), which signals the logic of truth, is emphasised ten times over (or 11 including line 2) with the repetition of ‘and’ and further accentuated by the points of comparison within each of the lines. The Poet is ‘tired’ to the point of death of the tendency to miscall ‘truth’ beauty, except that, if his objections ‘die’, he would leave his own youthful sensibility ‘alone’ without mature guidance.

3.46     Sonnets 67 and 68, nature/Nature

Having addressed the dynamic of truth in sonnet 66 the Poet turns to the issue of beauty in the sonnet pair 67/68. The two sonnets have left editors wondering whether to capitalise the word Nature or not. In Q, sonnet 67 has a lower case ‘nature’ and sonnet 68 an upper case ‘Nature’. In this instance, the distinction points firstly to human nature and then evokes Nature at large. The two sonnets have been noted for their use of the word ‘store’, and the image of ‘mapping’ as a metaphor for the genealogical dynamic.
        The presence of the increase argument in the two sonnets, the mention of Rose twice in sonnet 67, and beauty 5 times in the two sonnets, indicates their purpose. The argument is directed at correcting traditional confusion over the status of ‘Art’ or aesthetics consequent upon the apologetic defense of the Christian faith. The couplet of 68 brings together the logical preconditions in which the two words ‘Nature store’ characterise the nature/sexual dynamic and the increase dynamic. Only through an adherence to natural logic can the youth be used as a map ‘to show false Art what beauty was’. The mention of ‘sepulchers’, ‘dead fleece’, and ‘holy antique hours’, point to Shakespeare’s criticism of the psychological illusions in Christian dogma.

Ah wherefore with infection should he live,
And with his presence grace impiety,
That sin by him advantage should achieve,
And lace it self with his society?
Why should false painting imitate his cheek,
And steal dead seeing of his living hue?
Why should poor beauty indirectly seek
Roses of shadow, since his Rose is true?
Why should he live, now nature bankrupt is,
Beggared of blood to blush through lively veins,
For she hath no exchequer now but his,
And proud of many, lives upon his gains?
    O him she stores, to show what wealth she had,
    In days long since, before these last so bad.
                                    (Sonnet 67)

Thus is his cheek the map of days out-worn,
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now.
Before these bastard signs of fair were born,
Or durst inhabit on a living brow:
Before the golden tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchers, were shorn away,
To live a second life on second head,
Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay:
In him those holy antique hours are seen,
Without all ornament, it self and true,
Making no summer of another’s green,
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new,
    And him as for a map doth Nature store,
    To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
                                    (Sonnet 68)

3.47     Sonnet 69 and truth and beauty

After the reaffirmation of the truth and beauty dynamic in sonnet 62, and the close examination of truth in sonnet 66 and beauty in sonnets 67/68, the Poet returns to both truth and beauty in sonnet 69. Consistent with the presentation of the dynamic of truth and beauty out of sonnet 14, the image of the eye is introduced in the first line. ‘Those parts’ of the youth visible to the ‘eye’ of the world (read face and sexual organ), lack nothing in beauty that ‘thought’ or ‘tongues’ which ‘utter truth’ can add. A clear distinction is drawn between the singularity of the sensation of beauty and the possibility of discrimination in the dynamic of truth.
        Only when the eye looks beyond the outward parts into the expected beauty of the youth’s mind does the eye find that the deeds revealed by his thoughts are not fair flowers but rank weeds. The apparent denial of the dynamic of truth by the youth’s outward appearance, leads to a distortion of the truth dynamic in his mind to accommodate the denial. The ‘odour’ of the corrupted process of truth is in contrast to his outward ‘show’ or apparent beauty. The ‘soil’, or the home truth, is that the youth is not derived from an ideal God but, like all human beings ‘dost common grow’ through the process of increase.

Those parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view,
Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend:
All tongues (the voice of souls) give thee that end,
Uttering bare truth, even so as foes Commend.
Their outward thus with outward praise is crowned,
But those same tongues that give thee so thine own,
In other accents do this praise confound
By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.
They look into the beauty of thy mind,
And that in guess they measure by thy deeds,
Then churls their thoughts (although their eies were kind)
To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds,
    But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,
    The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.
                                    (Sonnet 69)

        The editors, not appreciating the logical exactness of the presentation of the dynamic of truth and beauty in terms of the eye that ‘views’ the ‘parts’ of the youth, change the ‘their’ in line 5 to ‘thy’. The ‘their’ refers to the parts of the youth and not his whole being because the initial look by the world’s eye does not peer into his eyes.

3.48     Sonnets with contemporary references

While all the references to entities in Q have their counterparts in the personae of the Poet, in a few sonnets it is possible to discern residual allusions to events of Shakespeare’s day. Commentators have noted the mention of ‘Hews’ in sonnet 20, the association of ‘slander’ and ‘crow’ in sonnet 70, the reference to ‘o’er greene’ in sonnet 112, the ‘naming thy name’ associated with ‘Rose’ in sonnet 95, the period of ‘three years’ from sonnet 104, and the reference to the ‘mortal Moon’ in sonnet 107. The possible allusions suggest Shakespeare reworked sonnets that may have previously addressed personal experiences or topical events.
        Sonnet 70 does seem to refer to Shakespeare’s experience of being slandered as an ‘upstart crow’ in the early 1590s. But as one of the sonnets presenting the Sonnet philosophy it is principally about the imperfect idealism of youth and the Poet’s mature reflection on attributing guilt. The youth is as much an individual as he is a persona of Shakespeare’s youth.

That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair,
The ornament of beauty is suspect,
A Crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air.
So thou be good, slander doth but approve,
Their worth the greater being wooed of time,
For Canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
And thou present’st a pure unstained prime.
Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days,
Either not assailed, or victor being charged,
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
To tie up envy, evermore enlarged,
    If some suspect of ill masked not thy show,
    Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.
                                    (Sonnet 70)

        If anything, topical allusions are a reminder that Shakespeare’s philosophy is modeled on life. But their obliqueness also demonstrates how his life experiences were transmuted into a form that facilitated rather than obstructed the evolution of the mature expression of his philosophy. Attempts to understand the Sonnets out of the allusions, as those like John Dover Wilson and A. L. Rowse have tried to do, reveal an ignorance of the Sonnet philosophy and a lack of insight into artistic practice.

3.49     Sonnets 71 to 75, death and life

Sonnets 71 to 75 meditate on the relation of the Poet to aging or death. The dynamic of truth and beauty is founded in the processes of life. It is not constrained by any particular life nor any particular poetic expression about life, or the role of death in it. In sonnet 75 the youth is called ‘food to life’ of which the Poet cannot get enough.

No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world with vildest worms to dwell:
Nay if you read this line, remember not,
The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O if (I say) you look upon this verse,
When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
But let your love even with my life decay.
    Least the wise world should look into your moan,
    And mock you with me after I am gone.
                                    (Sonnet 71)

O least the world should task you to recite,
What merit lived in me that you should love
After my death (dear love) forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing worthy prove.
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I,
Than niggard truth would willingly impart.
O least your true love may seem false in this,
That you for love speak well of me untrue,
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me, nor you.
    For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
    And so should you, to love things nothing worth.
                                    (Sonnet 72)

That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day,
As after Sunset fadeth in the West,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death bed, whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
    This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
    To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.
                                    (Sonnet 73)

But be contented when that fell arrest,
Without all bail shall carry me away,
My life hath in this line some interest,
Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.
When thou renewest this, thou dost renew,
The very part was consecrate to thee,
The earth can have but earth, which is his due,
My spirit is thine the better part of me,
So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,
The prey of worms, my body being dead,
The coward conquest of a wretch’s knife,
Too base of thee to be remembered,
    The worth of that, is that which it contains,
    And that is this, and this with thee remains.
                                    (Sonnet 74)

        The ‘content’ of the poetry remains, and the youth is but one of the manifestations of the ‘content’.

So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet seasoned showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife,
As twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure,
Some-time all full with feasting on your sight,
And by and by clean starved for a look,
Possessing or pursuing no delight
Save what is had, or must from you be took.
    Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
    Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
                                    (Sonnet 75)

3.50     Sonnets 76 and 77, the content of poetry

Sonnet 76 addresses the issue of the content of the poetry directly. The Poet appreciates that a philosophy based in the natural logic of life, established in the structuring of the whole set and the first 14 sonnets, could appear repetitive. He knows, though, that only such a consistent application of the basic tenets of the philosophy can allow a genuine expression of love in all its forms. His philosophy has the regularity and persistence of the daily rounds of the Sun. His Sonnets are the result of a logical and consistent appreciation of the dynamic of truth and beauty.

Why is my verse so barren of new pride?
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with time do I not glance aside
To new found methods, and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
O know sweet love I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument:
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
    For as the Sun is daily new and old,
    So is my love still telling what is told.
                                    (Sonnet 76)

        The relationship between what the poetry ‘contains’ and the dynamic of increase is affirmed in sonnet 77. This is the last sonnet before the half way point of the whole set, immediately before the group of 9 Alien Poet sonnets. Appropriately, the nature of the ‘content’ is compared to ‘children nursed, delivered from thy brain’. Any sense of doubt expressed in sonnet 76, is dispelled by the reaffirmation of the Poet’s guiding principles.

Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties were,
Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste,
The vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear,
And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show,
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory,
Thou by thy dials shady stealth mayst know,
Time’s thievish progress to eternity.
Look what thy memory cannot contain,
Commit to these waste blacks, and thou shalt find
Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
    These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
    Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.
                                    (Sonnet 77)

3.51     The Alien Poet sonnets, 78 to 86

The next 9 sonnets are the Alien Poet sonnets (78 to 86). The Alien Poets, as representatives of an inconsistent philosophy, are used as a foil to the Poet’s consistent understanding of the dynamic of truth and beauty. They represent the Poet’s concerted attempt to bring home to the youth the consequences of not appreciating the significance of the 1 Muse that, added to the old 9, would make his understanding logically correct and complete. These sonnets have been considered above, and are considered more fully, in the section on the mythic Poet in Part 4.

3.52     Sonnets 87 to 94, the cost of the ideal

Immediately after sonnet 86, sonnet 87 develops the heightened awareness of the consequences of misunderstanding the Poet’s intent in the previous 9 sonnets. If the youth cannot free himself from the domination of the idealistic expectation then his understanding will be no more than that of an Alien Poet. The 9 Muses represent the conditions for inspiration from the mind alone. They do not represent the logical influence of the body. They are insufficient inspiration for a poetry that would want to be both logical and capable of conveying the deepest emotions.
        The Poet’s criticism, apparent in the earlier sonnets, is now fully engaged. The excessive idealism exhibited by youth in general, if allowed to persist into maturity, distorts the truth and beauty dynamic by overemphasising the dimension of beauty or sensation, and by misrepresenting truth as a singular sensation. The error is typical of apologetics when it argues from the idea of a singular God, who supposedly embodies truth and beauty. The Sonnets critique the Christianity of Shakespeare’s day, and particularly the arbitrary morals and aesthetics of apologetic poetry such as Dante’s Divine Comedy.
        In sonnet 87, the Poet both distances himself from the influence of the youth and then, in the final lines, gives the conditions for rapprochement. The Poet says farewell to the costly (‘dear’) consequences of forever living in the expectation of the ideal. He knows he does not ‘deserve’ such ‘riches’. His ‘patent’, or his own mature sensibility, ‘swerves’ back or reasserts itself. Only in the context of the Poet’s mature, or ‘better’, judgment can the youth’s distorted idealism ‘come home again’. Idealism is like a dream in which the dreamer fantasises he is King, only to find the fantasy evaporates upon ‘waking’.

Farewell thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate,
The Charter of thy worth gives thee releasing:
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thy self thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking,
So thy great gift upon misprison growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
    Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,
    In sleep a King, but waking no such matter.
                                    (Sonnet 87)

        Sonnet 88 is considered in the discussion of personae under sonnet 22. It identifies the double consequence, or ‘vantage’, of the Poet defending his youth against accusations of wrongdoing. Once the idealistic personality of youth is recognised as the logically immature precursor to, and an indelible component of, the mature personality, the dynamic of truth, or ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, can function logically. The recognition of its derivation from the possibility of ‘love’, or the increase dynamic, is the prerequisite for such a possibility.

When thou shalt be disposed to set me light,
And place my merit in the eie of scorn,
Upon thy side, against my self I’ll fight,
And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn:
With mine own weakness being best acquainted,
Upon thy part I can set down a story
Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted:
That thou in losing me shall win much glory:
And I by this will be a gainer too,
For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,
The injuries that to my self I do,
Doing thee vantage, double vantage me.
    Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
    That for thy right, my self will bear all wrong.
                                    (Sonnet 88)

        Sonnets 89 and 90 form a logical pair connected by a ‘then’, and sonnets 91 to 93 form a logical trio connected by a ‘but’ and a ‘so’. They continue the critique of the ideal by demonstrating the inconsistency of considering it as an autonomous condition separable from the necessary insights of maturity. They demonstrate the logical role of the increase argument in the resolution of the inconsistencies. Only with such an adjustment to the traditional expectations of the ideal can the truth and beauty dynamic be represented without contradiction. A detailed analysis of the five sonnets is available in Volume 2.
        The concerns of sonnets 89 to 93 are given powerful expression in sonnet 94. Its more impersonal form (lacking the familiar I, thy, or thou, of most of the other sonnets) heightens the sense of accusation toward misrepresentations of the significance of the ideal. It suggests that idealists, like the youth, deceive themselves and others with their ‘show’. Because the Poet’s sense of purpose and his values are derived logically from nature, and from the role of the human possibility within nature, his understanding of truth and beauty is not constrained by a need to discover value in the processes of human understanding alone.
        The tendency to prioritise certain preferred attributes of the understanding and consider them sacrosanct is not uncommon in human understanding, but it becomes an infection that ‘festers’ when it mitigates against natural logic. The logic of truth and beauty is such that any sensation (beauty) involves a singular effect, and that any judgment (truth) involves a perpetual determination between right and wrong. Truth is not a singular effect or result but a continuous process of evaluation between various possibilities. Its natural dynamic of perpetual assessment is anchored in the logic of nature.
        In sonnet 94, the Poet criticises those who do nothing but consider themselves above temptation and above the abuse of power to hurt others. The Poet ironically concedes, ‘they rightly’ inherit ‘heaven’s graces’, or the impossible ideal of the heavenly God. With false economy, they fail to make an ‘expense’ of ‘nature’s riches’ or the capacity to increase. With false modesty they are the ‘Lords’ of their public faces or how they appear in the world. Like the Lord, they consider ‘others’ are made in their image and likeness. In reality they are like ‘summer flowers’ who have a brief moment of glory ‘when the summer is sweet’. They reveal their selfishness in their susceptibility to ‘base infection’.
        The last few lines conclude that those who are considered ‘weeds’ are preferable to the transitory purity of such ‘lilies’, because ‘weeds’ are less inclined to distort the truth and beauty dynamic for immediate and personal gain. By the logic of human nature, the lilies’ false piety and righteousness reveal them to be false to themselves and others.

They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
That do not do the thing, they most do show,
Who moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:
They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces
And husband nature’s riches from expense,
They are the Lords and owners of their faces,
Others, but stewards of their excellence:
The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to it self, it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed out-braves his dignity:
    For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds,
    Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.
                                    (Sonnet 94)

3.53     Sonnets 95 and 96, beauty and then truth

Following immediately on the characterisation of those who promote an illogical understanding of truth and beauty as festering ‘lilies’, sonnets 95 and 96 consider beauty and then truth respectively. For the Poet there are two illogical states of understanding. One is an over-determination of beauty or sensation that cripples the possibility of determining truth. The other is the reduction of the truth dynamic by exaggerating the potential of beauty. Sonnet 95 considers the first possibility and sonnet 96 the second.
        The image of the Rose occurs in sonnet 95. It is symptomatic of beauty throughout the Sonnets and, through its canker, of the unsustainable singularity of any form of beauty. The canker in the fragrant Rose is like a ‘sin’ hidden in the ‘sweet’ nature of the youth. The Poet warns the youth that the most determined efforts to ‘veil’ his ‘blots’ will simply blunt the ‘edge’ of his capacity for judgment.

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,
Which like a canker in the fragrant Rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name?
Oh in what sweets dost thou thy sins inclose!
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
(Making lascivious comments on thy sport)
Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise,
Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.
Oh what a mansion have those vices got,
Which for their habitation chose out thee,
Where beauty’s veil doth cover every blot,
And all things turns to fair, that eies can see!
    Take heed (dear heart) of this large privilege,
    The hardest knife ill used doth lose his edge.
                                    (Sonnet 95)

If, in sonnet 95, beauty is explored as a singular sensation that momentarily conceals the division of thought, sonnet 96 introduces the process of ‘truth’ by presenting, in the first four lines, the conceptual division between ‘fault’ and ‘grace’. The dynamic of truth and beauty accommodates a perpetual interplay between what is right and what is wrong, and acknowledges the moments when the debate between right and wrong can give rise to a singular sensation or intuition as in poetry.
        In the four lines, the youth is represented as having the capacity to exhibit both faults and graces and to resolve the dichotomy between faults and graces by making ‘faults graces’. The truth and beauty dynamic is such that what was once an ‘error’ can be deemed ‘true’. A ‘base Jewel’ can become ‘well esteemed’ on the finger of a Queen. Sensations of worth are ‘translated’ into the possibility of truth, or the possibility of right or wrong, when a re-evaluation of the sense of worth is initiated by a change in circumstance.

Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness,
Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport,
Both grace and faults are loved of more and less:
Thou mak’st faults graces, that to thee resort:
As on the finger of a throned Queen,
The basest Jewel will be well esteemed:
So are those errors that in thee are seen,
To truths translated, and for true things deemed.
How many Lambs might the stern Wolf betray,
If like a Lamb he could his looks translate.
How many gazers mightst thou lead away,
If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state?
    But do not so, I love thee in such sort,
    As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
                                    (Sonnet 96)

        The possibility of the youth using the ‘strength’ of all his ‘state’ or full force of his beauty, is precluded by the Poet’s reminder that any youth, and particularly his own youth (‘As thou being mine’) is an early stage in the progress toward maturity. The Poet’s attitude toward youth is necessarily conditioned by his mature understanding. The adolescence of youth, which gives rise to the possibility of an over-determined ideal, is counterbalanced by the Poet’s judgment. The references to ‘Lords’ in sonnets 94 and 97, and ‘Lambs’ in 96 point to the adolescent condition of understanding typical of Christianity.

3.54     Sonnets 97 and 98 on increase

If the last few lines of sonnet 96 locate the truth and beauty dynamic in the logic of the personae of the Poet, sonnet 97 returns the debate to the source of truth and beauty, the increase dynamic. The barrenness of age, for the Poet, is like a winter away from the possibility of the heat of summer, and the ‘rich increase’ of Autumn. But, because of the youth’s intransigence, the Poet sees the Autumn as a ‘widowed womb’ that survives the death of its ‘Lord’, the summery ideal from sonnet 94. As long as the youth is not responsive to the Poet’s logic, the possibility of ‘abundant issue’ seems but the ‘hope of Orphans, and unfathered fruit’. If the ‘mute birds’ sing it is with a ‘dull cheer’ because Winter approaches without the possibility of issue.

How like a Winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year?
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen?
What old December’s bareness every where?
And yet this time removed was summer’s time,
The teeming Autumn big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like widowed wombs after their Lord’s decease:
Yet this abundant issue seemed to me,
But hope of Orphans, and unfathered fruit,
For Summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute.
    Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,
    That leaves look pale, dreading the Winter’s near.
                                    (Sonnet 97)

        The placing of a sonnet on increase at this point in the truth and beauty sequence to the youth, immediately after two sonnets detailing the dynamic and relationship between truth and beauty, repeats the pattern evident in sonnets 66 (truth) 67/68 (beauty) and 69 (increase).
        The spirit of spring, or the possibility of increase, is associated with the youth in sonnet 98. Yet, the Poet has no ‘summer’s story’ to tell, nor does he feel inclined to pluck the ‘flowers’, or admire the Lily’s white and the Rose’s vermilion. The Lily and the Rose, after all, were ‘but figures of delight’, or metaphors patterned on the memory of the youth. They come to nothing if the youth does not appreciate the relation of truth and beauty derived from the increase argument. Truth and beauty are a ‘shadow’ if the potential of youth to increase is not acknowledged. The logic of the Sonnets is corrupted if the youth remains insulated in the ideal.

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud pied April (dressed in all his trim)
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing:
That heavy Saturn laughed and lept with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hew,
Could make me any summer’s story tell:
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the Lilies white,
Nor praise the deep vermillion in the Rose,
They were but sweet, but figures of delight:
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
    Yet seemed it Winter still, and you away,
    As with your shadow I with these did play.
                                    (Sonnet 98)

3.55     Sonnet 99 in 15 lines

Sonnet 99 has a subsidiary function in the structure of the set. It stands out because of its odd form (15 lines, see 5.6). While being consistent with the themes around it, it was also written to make a point about a ‘scandal’ in Shakespeare’s experience from the late 1590s. It also contributes to the image derived from the whole set (see 5.7).

3.56     Sonnets 100 to 103, truth and beauty and the Muse

Sonnets 100 to 103 are the last of the sonnets to consider the role of the Muse as the representative of argument, thought, verse, etc., and so the truth function in the Sonnets. They also give an explicit expression of the truth and beauty dynamic in sonnet 101. Sonnet 101 has already been considered in this part (see 3.33) and the Muse sonnets are considered in the section on the Muse below (see 3.103).

3.57     Sonnet 104, the natural cycle of maturity

The double reading of the Sonnets, about a youth of the Poet’s experience, and about the youthful persona of the Poet, applies particularly to sonnet 104. The period of 3 years, mentioned in the octet and unique to this sonnet, can be read either as the interval of time from when the Poet first met the youth, or as a metaphor for the Poet’s understanding of youth. The first reading remains facile if the 3 years are seen simply as a period since Shakespeare first met a particular youth. The philosophic content of the Sonnets suggests the three rounds of seasons have a meaning within the sonnet that relates to the content of the whole set.
        In sonnet 22 the Poet looked into the mirror to see time’s furrows on his brow. His external appearance belied that of the youth he had once been. In sonnet 104, the ‘eye I eyed’ of line 2 conjures up a image in which the discovery of the ‘I’ of identity acts as a two-way mirror between the youth’s idealising ‘eye’ and the Poet’s mature ‘eyed’. The potential for the realisation of the ‘I’ of identity is intermediate between the period of youth and the period of maturity.
        The three-part process provides a temporal relationship between the idealistic youth, the logical awareness of identity, and the fulfillment of maturity. Line 8, which concludes the initial development of the idea, repeats and confirms the temporal nature of the imagery of line 2. ‘Since first I saw you fresh’ reiterates the three part dynamic ‘when first your eye I eyed’. The maturity of the older Poet, the realisation of identity, and the greenness of his youth, are the three logical phases of life necessary for an appreciation of the dynamic of truth and beauty. In the Poet’s mind the 3 phases can be represented as three rounds of seasons, or a period of three years. The ‘beauty’, or greenness, of youth is an ineradicable feature of the Poet’s early experience despite the three periods or ‘years’ of development and despite the inevitable cycle of birth to death, typified by the cycle of the seasons.
        The sestet then revisits the relation between the possibility of beauty, the eyes, and the increase argument from sonnet 14. The freshness of the beauty of youth, while apparent in any youth, does not last beyond youth. Over time beauty imperceptibly fades in ‘hue’ till eventually the older Poet’s ‘eye’, or the last part of the three part equation, must die. In fact, the youth’s seemingly still fresh beauty begins to die in the womb before he was born. The youth, if he remains ‘unbred’ or without increase, cannot survive the irony of the Poet’s taunt in the first line that ‘he never can be old’. If he imagines his beauty will remain forever green then he does not understand the logical relation between truth and beauty and increase, the principal content of the Sonnets.

To me fair friend you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still: Three Winters cold,
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,
Three beautious springs to yellow Autumn turned,
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green.
Ah yet doth beauty like a Dyall hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace percieved,
So your sweet hue, which me thinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.
    For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred,
    Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.
                                    (Sonnet 104)

3.58     Sonnet 105, idolatry

Sonnet 105 dissociates the Poet from all forms of idolatry (including all forms of Christian idolatry). The philosophy of the Sonnets is concerned to correct the inconsistencies of traditional mythologies by articulating a system based in natural logic. The unity of nature characterises the whole set, and the three parts of the set make up a unity when added together numerologically.
        The increase dynamic and the truth and beauty dynamic similarly have three components that constitute a unity. The logical understanding of the Sonnets, by being ‘constant’ or logically unified, expresses ‘one’ thing and ‘leaves out difference’. Shakespeare’s system is inherently unified in nature so any division in understanding is seen against the unity of the whole dynamic. By contrast, the Christian understanding is internally divided between God and Evil.
        Shakespeare brings the freshness of his logic to bear on the old saw ‘fair, kind, and true’ to demonstrate its underlying philosophic roots. The word ‘fair’ in the Sonnets refers to both visual beauty and fairness as a value. So ‘fair’, like the Rose, represents beauty but also represents the capacity of a sensation to be the object of thought. In contrast, ‘kindness’ is not a sensation but a disposition of mind, one that requires the input of conscious effort. Similarly ‘true’ is an evaluation made in the context of the possibility of something being true or false.
        So, fair, kind and true are characteristic of truth or the dynamic of evaluation. In these three words, the Poet is able to represent the dynamic of truth and beauty, which, on the logical model out of nature, brings together the three themes into a unified logic. By comparison, the inconsistent model based on the idolatry of the male God, by distorting the dynamic of truth and beauty, distorts the relation of fair, kind, and true.

Let not my love be called Idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an Idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence,
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,
Fair, kind and true, varying to other words,
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
    Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone.
    Which three till now, never kept seat in one.
                                    (Sonnet 105)

3.59     Sonnet 106 and the vanity of writing

Sonnet 106 notes the descriptions in old ‘chronicles’ of the beauty of ‘hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow’. But, logically, the sensation of beauty cannot adequately be expressed in verse because the use of Pen or tongue to praise cannot capture the sensation of ‘eyes that wonder’. Truth and beauty are separate modes of understanding that cannot be confused without contradiction. The sensation of beauty conveyed by verse, or ‘old rhyme’, is always conditioned by the truth of saying by ‘tongue’ or ‘Pen’. The dynamic between truth and beauty is a consequence of its derivation from the unity and diversity of nature.

When in the Chronicle of wasted time,
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
In praise of Ladies dead, and lovely Knights,
Then in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique Pen would have expressed,
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring,
And for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not still enough your worth to sing:
    For we which now behold these present days,
    Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
                                    (Sonnet 106)

        Sonnet 107 was mentioned in regard to possible topical references (see 3.48) and sonnets 108 and 109 carry the sense of the youth as the Poet’s persona (see 3.23). These sonnets are considered more fully in the commentaries in Volume 2. Sonnet 109 is the last of the youth sonnets to mention the Rose and is discussed in the section on the Rose (see 3.101).

3.60     Sonnets 110 and 111, God and nature

The identification of the singularity of the Rose (and its hidden duality) with the ‘Universe’, and the affirmation that ‘in it thou art my all’ at the end of sonnet 109, is consistent with the numerology of nature as both 1 and 2.
        In the following sonnet, 110, the Poet critiques inadequate modes of thought and being. He rediscovers and recovers the consistent dynamic of truth that he previously looked on ‘askance and strangely’. He acknowledges that ‘these blenches’, or the recoiling from previous inconsistencies, gave his ‘heart another youth’. He resolved to ‘try an older friend’, the God of love or Eros. Eros, whose mother is the goddess of Nature, predates the illogical priority of the male God of Christianity. Sonnet 109 identified the Poet’s ‘heaven’ as the ‘Universe’ or nature, with which the Rose, as the anagram of Eros, combines to make the Poet’s ‘all’.

Alas ’tis true, I have gone here and there,
And made my self a motley to the view,
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new.
Most true it is, that I have looked on truth
Askance and strangely: But by all above,
These blenches gave my heart an other youth,
And worse essays proved thee my best of love,
Now all is done, have what shall have no end,
Mine appetite I never more will grind
On newer proof, to try an older friend,
A God in love, to whom I am confined.
    Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
    Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
                                    (Sonnet 110)

        The ‘guilty goddess’, in sonnet 111, identified in line 6 as ‘my nature’, is Shakespeare’s sovereign mistress, or Nature. The identification of Shakespeare’s principal entity continues a pattern of identifications with the ‘universe’ and ‘my Rose’, and ‘my heaven’ in the previous two sonnets. Nature can be ‘guilty’ because the duality of nature accommodates both right and wrong. While the Poet is prepared to drink ‘potions of Eisel’ as penance to clear his name, the youth’s pity would be sufficient as a cure. The youth’s appreciation of the logic of nature is all the Poet requires.
        Editors, unaware of the significance of Nature, the sovereign mistress from sonnet 126, change the ‘wish’ in line 1, to ‘with’ to align the youth with fortune against the guilty goddess. They do not appreciate that Shakespeare has changed the priorities from the illogicality of the male God to the logicality of female nature.

O for my sake do you wish fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the Dyer’s hand,
Pity me then, and wish I were renewed,
Whilst like a willing patient I will drink,
Potions of Eisel ’gainst my strong infection,
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance to correct correction.
    Pity me then dear friend, and I assure ye,
    Even that your pity is enough to cure me.
                                    (Sonnet 111)

        Sonnet 112, while continuing the theme of 111, seems to contain a reference to a controversial event from the early 1590s (see 3.48). Also considered elsewhere are the sonnet pair 113/114 (see 3.25).

3.61     Sonnets 115 and 116, the truth of increase

The philosophy of the Sonnets, which prioritises nature rather than the male God, removes the fear of ‘time’s tyranny’ and the uneasy sense of ‘certainty’ surrounded by ‘uncertainty’. Only then can the dynamic of truth and beauty be understood logically. If the Poet’s lines ‘did lie’ before, it is because ‘love’ cannot be contained within words alone. ‘Judgment’, or the determination of truth, is only part of the equation. The ‘millioned’ accidents of time, or the process of birth and death over generations, take the shine off all things, including God’s ‘beauty’ (‘tan sacred beauty’). ‘Love is a Babe’ because only then, when the logic of increase is respected can love grow and continue to grow across generations.

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer,
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why,
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning time, whose millioned accidents
Creep in twixt vows, and change decrees of Kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of alt’ring things:
Alas why fearing of time’s tyranny,
Might I not then say now I love you best,
When I was certain o’er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest:
    Love is a Babe, then might I not say so
    To give full growth to that which still doth grow.
                                    (Sonnet 115)

        Some commentators have considered sonnet 116 to be the key to the understanding of the Sonnets (along with sonnet 129). Sonnet 116 has been touted as the sonnet of unconditional love. It is contrasted with sonnet 129, which is seen as the sonnet of absolute lust. However, sonnet 116 is merely one of the many youth sonnets presenting the dynamic of truth and beauty. Sonnet 116 is written to a male, it has strong erotic allusions in the third quatrain, and a couplet that implies the error to be ‘proved’ relates to the erotic processes. So claims that it expresses an ideal purity of love are contrary to the content of the sonnet and contrary to the dynamic of truth and beauty developed in the Sonnets.

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 wand’ring 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.
                                    (Sonnet 116)

3.62     Sonnets 117 to 119, the benefit of ill

In sonnet 116 the logic of true and false is heightened to create the lyrical passages that confuse the idealist. Sonnets 117, 118, 119 and the following sonnets quickly dispel the sense of heightened devotion most commentators read into sonnet 116. The talk of hate, sickness and poison, and the idea of the ‘benefit of ill’ (119.9), would seem to be contrary to the sentiment of absolute love in 116.
        Only by acknowledging the content of 116, with its underlying increase argument, can sense be made of its relation to the following sonnets. The excess of purity and excess of lust (sonnet 129) identified by some indicates a psychological inability to appreciate the significance of the prior principles established in the complete set and the early sonnets.
        Sonnet 117 argues that despite the Poet’s faults the youth should accept that he ‘strove to prove’ the ‘constancy and virtue’ of the youth’s love. The Poet was not trying to demonstrate the quality of his own love but encourage the youth to see the logic of the source of love in the increase dynamic. Only then will the youth understand the logic of truth and beauty.

Accuse me thus, that I have scanted all,
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day,
That I have frequent been with unknown minds,
And given to time your own dear purchased right,
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
Which should transport me farthest from your sight.
Book both my willfulness and errors down,
And on just proof surmise, accumulate,
Bring me within the level of your frown,
But shoot not at me in your wakened hate:
    Since my appeal says I did strive to prove
    The constancy and virtue of your love.
                                    (Sonnet 117)

        The dangers of the ideal are addressed in sonnet 118. The Poet turns to ‘bitter sauces’ to temper the ‘near cloying sweetness’ of the youth. To ensure that ‘rank of goodness’ did not grow into ‘faults’ the Poet dosed himself with ‘ill’. This characterisation of the truth and beauty dynamic captures the full force of its process of give and take. The Poet has learned the lesson that, if the idealism of the youth is taken as an antidote, the taker will be poisoned rather than cured.

Like as to make our appetites more keen
With eager compounds we our pallet urge,
As to prevent our maladies unseen,
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge.
Even so being full of your near cloying sweetness,
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;
And sick of welfare found a kind of meetness,
To be diseased ere that there was true needing.
Thus policy in love t’anticipate
The ill that were, not grew to faults assured,
And brought to medicine a healthful state
Which rank of goodness would by ill be cured.
    But thence I learn and find the lesson true,
    Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.
                                    (Sonnet 118)

        In sonnet 119, the ‘madding fever’ of idealised love, is ‘made better by evil’. So, when that ‘love’ is ‘built anew’ it grows fairer first, and then stronger and greater. The return on the investment in ‘ill’ is threefold. The ‘content’ of the Sonnets ensures that the dynamic of truth and beauty is anchored logically in the processes of life. Once the processes of life are acknowledged, the return is ‘stronger’ and ‘greater’.

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears
Distil’d from Lymbecks foul as hell within,
Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,
Still losing when I saw myself to win?
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
Whilst it hath thought it self so blessed never?
How have mine eies out of their Spheres benefited
In the distraction of this madding fever?
O benefit of ill, now I find true
That better is, by evil still made better.
And ruined love when it is built anew
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
    So I return rebuked to my content,
    And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.
                                    (Sonnet 119)

3.63 Sonnets 120, 121, the nature of evil

Sonnet 120 is conciliatory. The youth’s trespass and the Poet’s transgression are resolved when ‘mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me’.

That you were once unkind be-friends me now,
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my Nerves were brass or hammered steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken
As I by yours, y’have passed a hell of Time,
And I a tyrant have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.
O that our night of woe might have remembered
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
And soon to you, as you to me then tendered
The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!
    But that your trespass now becomes a fee,
    Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.
                                    (Sonnet 120)

        Against the characterisation of all men as bad, the Poet argues it is better to be demonstrably vile than to be ‘esteemed vile’ as a condition of birth (original sin). ‘Why should other’s false adulterate eyes’ (possibly referring to God’s adultery with Joseph’s Mary) call the Poet false. The Poet considers the process of increase ‘good’, while they have condemned it as ‘bad’. His ‘deeds’, though’, cannot be shown up by their ‘rank thoughts’. Sonnets such as this show that Shakespeare considered the biblical Church corrupt in its understanding of the role of myth.

Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be, receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed,
Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing.
For why should others’ false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies;
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses, reckon up their own,
I may be straight though they them-selves be bevel
By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown
    Unless this general evil they maintain,
    All men are bad and in their badness reign.
                                    (Sonnet 121)

3.64     Sonnets 123, 124, the foiling of time

Sonnet 122 was given some attention in the consideration of personae when discussing sonnet 22.
        Sonnets 123 to 125 lead to the final audit of the youth by Nature, the sovereign mistress, in sonnet 126. They reiterate the theme of the Sonnets that ‘time’s scythe’ is powerless against the logic of increase. Time, as a human construct that creates the expectation of the finality of death, would meet its own ‘doom and date’ if the priority of increase was destroyed. In sonnet 123, the Poet states that, despite time’s ‘scythe’ he would be ‘true’. The Poet’s sense of truth is logically tied to the possibility of increase over which conventional time has no control.

No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change,
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,
They are but dressings of a former sight:
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire,
What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
And rather make them born to our desire,
Than think that we before have heard them told:
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wond’ring at the present, nor the past,
For thy records, and what we see doth lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste:
    This I do vow and this shall ever be,
    I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.
                                    (Sonnet 123)

        The Poet’s love has its roots in the increase argument. In sonnet 124, he states that if his love were the child of state, where ‘time’s love’ and ‘time’s hate’ isolate truth and beauty from its natural basis in increase, it would literally be ‘unfathered’. He calls upon the ‘fools of time’ to witness their falsity. They make as if they died for ‘goodness’, when instead they lived for ‘crime’. Their crime is the denial of the natural logic of life.

If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for fortune’s bastard be unfathered,
As subject to time’s love, or to time’s hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.
No it was builded far from accident,
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto th’inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy that Heretic,
Which works on leases of short numbered hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.
    To this I witness call the fools of time,
    Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.
                                    (Sonnet 124)

3.65     Sonnet 125, the youth’s choice

Sonnet 125 reviews the youth’s double standard. He has a simple heart and is also susceptible to time’s constructs as well as the form and favour of Alien Poets. The Poet, though, is free of such ‘waste and ruining’. He is beyond the ‘control’ of youth acting as a ‘suborned informer’ who attempts to impeach the Poet’s ‘true soul’, but ironically impeaches his own.

Were’t ought to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honoring,
Or laid great bases for eternity,
Which proves more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favor
Lose all, and more by paying too much rent
For compound sweet; Forgoing simple savor,
Pitiful thrivors in their gazing spent.
No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,
And take thou my oblation, poor but free,
Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art,
But mutual render only me for thee.
    Hence, thou subborned Informer, a true soul
    When most impeached, stands least in thy control.
                                    (Sonnet 125)

3.66     Sonnet 126, the final audit

The Master Mistress sequence concludes with the youth called to ‘Audit’ (126.11) for his appreciation of the truth and beauty dynamic out of the increase argument and its logical derivation from the structure of the whole set. If he has understood the content of the Sonnets, his state of mind is one with the logical dynamic of increase. He is one with the Mistress and the Poet. If he has not understood the content then Nature will absorb him back into her natural processes without compunction.

O Thou my lovely Boy who in thy power,
Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his sickle, hour:
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st,
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st.
If Nature (sovereign mistress over wrack)
As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill,
May time disgrace, and wretched minute kill.
Yet fear her O thou minion of her pleasure,
She may detain, but not still keep her treasure!
Her Audit (though delayed) answered must be,
And her Quietus is to render thee.
    (                                                    )
    (                                                    )
                                    (Sonnet 126)

3.67     Summary

This brief passage through the truth and beauty dynamic of the Master Mistress sequence should demonstrate the utility of the dynamic as a tool to expose the themes and issues addressed. Following the presentation of the logical relationship of increase and truth and beauty in sonnet 14, in sonnets 15 to 19 the Poet provided the transition from increase to the presentation of the truth and beauty dynamic for the education of the Master Mistress in sonnets 20 to 126.

3.68     Truth and beauty in sonnets 127 to 154

In the Mistress sequence the logic of the truth and beauty dynamic is given its definitive formulation. The presence of a coherent presentation of beauty and then truth in the Mistress sequence establishes the significance of the beauty and truth dynamic as part of the logic of the whole set.
        The Poet takes a different attitude toward the Mistress than he does toward the Master Mistress when he considers beauty and truth. The youth’s numbering of 9 identifies him as deficient in a logical component required for unity. The absence of that element has the consequence of accentuating the idealism in his constitution beyond the point of balance for a unified personality. The Poet addresses the influence of that excess on the youth’s behaviour and particularly on his attitude to the Mistress. Sonnet 41 explored one of the negative consequences when the youth attempts to ‘prevail’ regardless of a woman’s state of mind.
        In the Mistress sonnets the Poet confronts not the youth’s overwrought idealism and its inherent inadequacy but a being in whom idealism and the antithesis to idealism are logically combined. The Mistress’ dual numbering of 1 and 2 characterises her as the repository of, and source of, the complete beauty and truth dynamic. By comparison, even the Poet, though he recombines the numbering of the youth (9) and the Mistress (1) to become a unity in his own right, expresses in his poetry only a comprehension of the situation (hence his numbering of 145). He uses words to convey what he experiences as the complexity of the Mistress’ innate dynamic of beauty and truth.
        The consequence is that the Poet has continually to deepen his understanding of the Mistress. By comparison, particularly because the Master Mistress is an earlier stage in his own development, he understands more precisely the nature of youth. The idealism of the youth comes from his unfamiliarity with the bounds of reason, so the arguments to rectify its excesses are available from within reason. The Poet finds, when he is confronted with the Mistress, his processes of reason are not sufficient to account for the seeming contradictions in his response to her ‘beauty’ and to her expressions of ‘truth’.
        Beauty in the Mistress sonnets is identified with all sensations, from the more earthy aspects of experience to the experience of mythic poetry. The Mistress is the embodiment of all sensation. For this reason, the residual idealistic tendencies in the Poet (he having once been a youth) affect his capacity to articulate fully the dynamic of beauty evident in the Mistress. Whereas the Master Mistress tends to idealise sensation as if the beauty of the Rose was in its flower, for the Mistress the whole Rose with its canker and thorns represents the full range of sensations. The youth’s experience of beauty as the ideal is no more than the sensation of an idea in the mind.
        In the Mistress sonnets, the Poet confronts the primary source from which the distinction between true and false, good and bad, right and wrong is derived through the dynamic of language. Truth in the Mistress sonnets is in a continual process of emerging into articulate language from the chthonic processes and re-submerging when the ideas lead to intuitions and artistic expression. To the Poet, the Mistress appears as the source of what is at one moment considered good, but the next moment turns apparently bad.
        The idealistic tendency of the youth meant the beauty of youth was most likely to be aligned with the ‘true’ as against the ‘false’. In preparation for the experience of the more consistent presentation of the truth and beauty dynamic in the Mistress sonnets the Poet continually cautions the youth against presuming that the sensation of the ideal alone (God) can present a logical picture of the world. By identifying the 9 Muses of old as lacking a further significant 1 to add to 10 (sonnet 38), and pointing to the double nature of the Rose, the Poet prepares the youth for the logical state of affairs exemplified by the Mistress.
        The philosophy of the Sonnets recognises that truth and beauty derive logically from the relation of nature (154) and the female (28) and the male (126) and the reconnection of female and male to increase (sonnets 1 to 14). In the truth and beauty sonnets to the Mistress the connection to those logical givens is implicit in the nature of the female. The Poet confronts, in the Mistress, a direct expression of the logical dynamic at the site from which it was generated. By comparison, the truth and beauty dynamic in the youth sonnets is a secondary manifestation of the dynamic.

3.69     The organisation of the Mistress sequence

Like the Master Mistress sonnets that address the truth and beauty dynamic the Mistress sequence conforms to the inherent ordering established by the logical structuring out of nature the sexual dynamic and increase. Because the Mistress is prior to the Master Mistress and is the logical source of beauty and truth, the Mistress sequence is structured to define beauty and then truth. Unlike the presentation of the truth and beauty dynamic in the youth sonnets, where truth and beauty are considered concurrently, in the Mistress sequence beauty and truth are considered consecutively.
        While the principal role of the Mistress sequence is to present the definitive logic of beauty and truth, some sonnets in the sequence have a role in the subsidiary structures of the whole set. The positioning of such sonnets as 128 (the music sonnet), 136 (the second of the Will sonnets), sonnet 145 (the ‘hate away’ sonnet in octosyllables) and sonnets 153/154 (the classical sonnets) relates to subsidiary structural features. Their role is secondary to the beauty and truth dynamic generated by the Mistress.
        As a counterpart to sonnets 41 and 42, sonnets 133, 134, and 143, 144 mention the youth or male ‘friend’. Appropriately, the placement of 133 and 134 are in the sonnets discussing ‘beauty’ and, as if to emphasise the logical arrangement of the Mistress sequence, 143 and 144 are in the sonnets discussing ‘truth’. The paired sonnets in both sequences consider the issue of personae first raised in 20, 21 and 22, and evident in a number of other sonnets. Another anomalous sonnet is 129, which is part of the beauty dynamic but does not refer directly to the Mistress or the youth. It criticises the inversion of the female potentiality by the institution of the Church.
        Sonnets 135, 136 and 146 are the only sonnets in the Mistress sequence that allude to the idea of increase. All three mention the word ‘store’ in a reference to the capacity to persist through generations. But, because it is not required logically, there is no increase argument to encourage the Mistress to increase, nor arguments about the relation between nature/increase and the logic of poetry or art.
        The analysis of the Mistress sequence will establish that the beauty and truth dynamic provides the inherent structure for the sequence. As with the consideration of truth and beauty in the youth sequence, most but not all the Mistress sonnets will be considered in this survey. The full set of sonnet commentaries is available in Volume 2.

3.70     Sonnet 127, beauty introduced

‘Nature, the sovereign mistress’, appears in sonnet 126 to close the Master Mistress sequence with a statement of two possibilities for the youth. He either acknowledges his logical relation to the Mistress in terms of increase, or he accepts that when he dies Nature will render him unincreased into the earth. In sonnet 127, the connection to 126 is acknowledged by the only appearance of the word Nature in the Mistress sonnets, because the Mistress is a unity derived directly from Nature.
        In the Master Mistress sequence, the consideration of beauty as the singular effect of a sensation is most frequently concerned with the ideal associated with the male. But because the female is logically prior to the male she not only manifests aspects of the ideal typified in the male she is necessarily the source for the ideal.
        The clear identification of sonnet 127 as the first of the Mistress sonnets and the indication of the logical relation of the Mistress to Nature prepares the way for the consideration of the logical status of beauty and truth. And Shakespeare’s use of the name ‘Mistress’ heralds the appearance of the primal human representative of Nature.

In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were it bore not beauty’s name:
But now is black beauty’s successive heir,
And Beauty slandered with a bastard shame,
For since each hand has put on Nature’s power,
Fairing the foul with Art’s false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my Mistress’ eyes are Raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem,
At such who not born fair no beauty lack,
Slandering Creation with a false esteem,
    Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
    That every tongue says beauty should look so.
                                    (Sonnet 127)

        The sequence begins with a presentation of the status of beauty. ‘Beauty’, which is mentioned six times in sonnet 127, involves the full range of sensations. Only by being the repository for all sensations can the Mistress be the source for the development and articulation of a comprehensive sense of truth including the possibility of the ideal. She is the source of the ‘endless jar’ between ‘right and wrong’. The male or youth, with his tendency to overstate the significance of the ideal, lacks the comprehensiveness of the dynamic of beauty inherent in the Mistress.
        Sonnet 127 begins the Mistress sequence by also establishing the relationship between beauty and the eyes. The truth and beauty dynamic is again associated inextricably with the eyes of body and mind. And sonnet 130, after sonnets 128 and 129, begins with the image of the ‘Mistress’ eyes’ as well as an erotic reference to her ‘cheeks’.
        Truth is not mentioned in the first Mistress sonnet because the function of the sonnet is to establish the logical conditions for the beauty dynamic or the immediacy of sensation from which truth derives. Truth does not enter the sequence until sonnet 137 where beauty and then truth are mentioned. From sonnet 138 the focus on truth then continues until sonnet 152, before the two classical sonnets round out the set.

3.71     Sonnet 128, the second music sonnet

The relation of sonnet 128 to the music substructure in the sonnets has been discussed (see 1.18). Like sonnet 8 it stands out because of its development of the musical metaphor over 14 lines. Though the sonnet is dealt with elsewhere, the intense eroticism of its imagery is significant at this early stage in the Mistress sequence.

3.72     Sonnet 129, the expense of Spirit

Sonnet 129 introduces into the Sonnets a strident criticism of the excesses of idealism presented less explicitly in the sequence to the youth. It critiques the singular ideal or intensified sensation and reads as a criticism of the excesses of ecclesiastic institutions that promote the priority of the absolute ideal without regard for its incumbent evils (see 1.19).
        The sonnet confirms that the excesses of the ideal, in contrast to the Mistress’ balanced relation between the ideal and its antithesis, are no more than ‘lust in action’ or the illusory state of ‘heaven’ that leads men inevitably to ‘hell’. The capital ‘S’ on ‘Spirit’ (129.1) from Q suggests the sonnet be read as a condemnation of the excesses of Churches that create a false hope for an idealised ‘heaven’ and create a ‘hell’ on earth.

3.73     Sonnet 130, the five senses

After the interlude of the musical eroticism of sonnet 128 and the condemnation of the consequences of ‘Spiritual’ lust in sonnet 129, the sequence returns to a closer examination of the dynamic of beauty in sonnet 130. The Mistress is mentioned three times in its 14 lines. The ‘beauty’ of the Mistress is evoked through sensations of the most ordinary kind. As the Poet describes the Mistress, the five basic senses are mentioned. Shakespeare, like Duchamp 300 years later, understood implicitly that any type of beauty is but a form of sensation and so any sensation is a form of beauty to those who appreciate the inherent logic articulated at the beginning of the set.

My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the Sun,
Coral is far more red, than her lips red,
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head:
I have seen Roses damasked, red and white,
But no such Roses see I in her cheeks,
And in some perfumes is there more delight,
Than in the breath that from my Mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know,
That Music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My Mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
    And yet by heaven I think my love as rare,
    As any she belied with false compare.
                                    (Sonnet 130)

        Shakespeare highlights the logic of sensation by bringing the Rose from the Master Mistress sonnets into the Mistress sequence. The ideal Rose of the youth is absent from the cheeks (erotic) of the Mistress yet the Poet avows ‘by heaven’ his Mistress is as ‘rare’ as any heavenly goddess because she reveals the falseness in idealised beauty. The double mention of the Rose in sonnet 130 is the only time the word Rose occurs in the Mistress sonnets. The ideal associated with the Rose cannot appear independently in the Mistress sonnets. It is subsumed in the greater sense of beauty or sensation typified by the Mistress.
        The appearance of the word Music, with a capital M, in line 10 accentuates the significance of the sonnet. If the ‘Mistress’, ‘Nature’, ‘Beauty’, and the ‘false Arts’ along with ‘Creation’, were introduced together in sonnet 127, then the three mentions of the Mistress, the two of the Rose, and the reference to ‘pleasing’ Music in sonnet 130 accentuate the logical relation the Mistress bears to unalloyed nature. The ‘Music’ from the Mistress is natural music, or the music of the natural order of the octave that provides the music structure for the Sonnets out of sonnet 145. The Mistress is the origin of music because she manifests a natural music as the human representative of nature.

3.74     Sonnets 131 and 132, good and bad deeds

Sonnets 131 and 132 continue the presentation of beauty consistent with an understanding of the logic of sensations. A sensation is a sensation whatever quality it evokes. Shakespeare seeks to demonstrate that blackness is as good as fairness when it comes to matters of taste or the operation of the dynamic of beauty. Beauty is a singularity and so allows of no discrimination. Sonnet 131 has the Poet ‘swearing to himself alone’, even a thousand times, to show that beauty remains a sensation until it is articulated in the social dynamic of language.

Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,
As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;
For well thou know’st to my dear doting heart
Thou art the fairest and most precious Jewel.
Yet in good faith some say that thee behold,
Thy face hath not the power to make love groan;
To say they err, I dare not be so bold,
Although I swear it to my self alone.
And to be sure that is not false I swear
A thousand groans but thinking on thy face,
One on another’s neck do witness bear
Thy black is fairest in my judgments place.
    In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,
    And thence this slander as I think proceeds.
                                    (Sonnet 131)

        It is in the consciously directed activities or ‘deeds’ of the Mistress (or any human being) that the dynamic of truth or ‘judgment’ is logically located. This is confirmed in sonnet 132 where, in the couplet, the Poet ‘swears’ an oath. The dynamic of truth involves the conscious use of language.

Thine eies I love, and they as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,
Have put on black, and loving mourners be,
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain,
And truly not the morning Sun of Heaven
Better becomes the gray cheeks of th’East,
Nor that full Star that ushers in the Eaven
Doth half that glory to the sober West
As those two morning eyes become thy face:
O let it then as well beseem thy heart
To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,
And suit thy pity like in every part.
    Then will I swear beauty her self is black,
    And all they foul that thy complexion lack.
                                    (Sonnet 132)

3.75     Sonnets 133 and 134, the Mistress and the youth

Sonnets 133 and 134 perform a similar role in the Mistress sonnets as sonnets 41 and 42 in the Master Mistress sonnets. In both sequences, the Poet meditates on the triangle formed by the youth, himself and the Mistress.
        The differentiation of the male from the more basic status of the female creates a tension between the youth’s sense of independence from the Mistress and the logical requirement that the male return to the female. Youth is both the stage of development at which the ideal reaches its logical limit, and the stage for the greatest potential for increase. So, in the Poet’s eyes, the sensitivities of youth should not be wholly overwhelmed by a reunification with the chthonic depth of the Mistress. The Poet’s argument is not against the role of the ideal in the truth and beauty dynamic. Rather it is against the prioritising of the ideal in a way that distorts the truth and beauty dynamic.

Prison my heart in thy steel bosom’s ward,
But then my friend’s heart let my poor heart bail,
Who ere keeps me, let my heart be his guard,
Thou canst not then use rigour in my jail.
And yet thou wilt, for I being pent in thee,
Perforce am thine and all that is in me.
                                    (Sonnet 133.9-12)

        The two sonnets reiterate the inter-relatedness between the youth and the Mistress as beings in the world and their being personae of the Poet. For the Poet, the youth is either an independent human being or is a persona representing the early stage of the Poet’s development into a mature person.
        Whichever way the situation is viewed (external or internal) the Poet argues that the Mistress should ‘prison his heart’ so that the youth go free, because within the mature Poet resides the youth ‘for I being pent in thee, perforce am thine and all that is in me’. But the nature of the Mistress is such that, as the direct human representative of nature, the freedom allowed the male is conditional upon his eventual return to her. The Poet has ‘lost’ his youth to the Mistress because of the need to increase, and has ‘lost’ himself to the Mistress because without his understanding of the logic of increase he could not write poetry with the required content.

Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
For that deep wound it gives my friend and me;
I’st not enough to torture me alone,
But slave to slavery my sweet’st friend must be.
Me from my self thy cruel eye hath taken,
And my next self thou harder hast engrossed,
Of him, my self, and thee I am forsaken,
A torment thrice three-fold thus to be crossed:
Prison my heart in thy steel bosom’s ward,
But then my friend’s heart let my poor heart bail,
Who ere keeps me, let my heart be his guard,
Thou canst not then use rigor in my Jail.
    And yet thou wilt, for I being pent in thee,
    Perforce am thine and all that is in me.
                                    (Sonnet 133)

So now I have confessed that he is thine,
And I my self am mortgaged to thy will,
Myself I’ll forfeit, so that other mine,
Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still:
But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,
For thou art covetous, and he is kind,
He learned but surety-like to write for me,
Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.
The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,
Thou usurer that put’st forth all to use,
And sue a friend, came debtor for my sake,
So him I lose through my unkind abuse.
    Him have I lost, thou hast both him and me,
    He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.
                                    (Sonnet 134)

        In the two sonnets, the experience of undifferentiated sensations is consistent with the experience of beauty as black and fair developed in the earlier sonnets. In these Mistress sonnets Shakespeare locates the possibility of articulating ideas in the dynamic of sensation or beauty. The differentiation of sensations to form ideas mimics the sexual differentiation of male from female. Shakespeare uses the logical relationship between female/male and sensations/ideas when he creates characters as argument places in the longer poems and plays.

3.76     Sonnets 135 and 136, the Will sonnets

The distinctive tone of sonnets 135 and 136 seems to break arbitrarily into the presentation of the truth and beauty dynamic. But by employing a constant refrain of an erotic litany on the name ‘Will’, by making reference to the idea of ‘store’ from the increase sonnets, and by making continual reference to numbering, the two sonnets are obviously part of the sequence. Their distinctive tone suggests they were added late in the organisation of the whole set. The significance of the numbering is discussed in Part 5.4.
        Despite the obvious difference in style and tone from the other sonnets, 135 and 136 playfully acknowledge their relation to the truth and beauty dynamic immediately before the transition from beauty to truth in sonnet 137. The erotic play on ‘Will’ can be read as a witty presentation of the logical relation between the erotic ‘will’ and the ethical process of ‘willing’. By identifying himself as ‘Will’ in the last line of sonnet 136, the Poet draws a direct relationship between the sexual and erotic and the determinations, through language, of the conscious will. As the mature Poet of the Sonnets, he playfully appreciates the logical relation between increase and truth and beauty.

3.77     Sonnet 137, beauty as seeing, truth as saying

After examining the logic of sensations in sonnets 127 to 134, and playing on the sexual/erotic distinction and the language dynamic of willing and naming in sonnets 135/136, the Poet returns to a direct consideration of the logical status of beauty and then truth in sonnet 137. Sonnet 137 clearly represents the logical status of beauty in the first 4 lines. Then beauty’s relation to truth is considered in the remainder of the sonnet.

Thou blind fool love, what dost thou to mine eyes,
That they behold and see not what they see:
They know beauty is, see where it lies,
Yet what the best is, take the worst to be:
If eyes corrupt by over-partial looks,
Be anchored in the bay where all men ride,
Why of eyes’ falsehood hast thou forged hooks,
Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied?
Why should my heart think that a several plot,
Which my heart knows the wide world’s common place?
Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not
To put fair truth upon so foul a face.
    In things right true my heart and eyes have erred,
    And to this false plague are they now transferred.
                                    (Sonnet 137)

        The immediacy of sensations, including the nature of emotions such as ‘love’, requires that their effects must register in the mind before they can be rationalised. Beauty, as the entity in the Sonnets that encapsulates all sensations from the least significant to the most sublime, is characterised in lines 1 to 4 as ‘blind love’ that cannot differentiate between the ‘best’ and ‘worst’. The ‘judgment of the heart’ makes the discrimination of the ‘eyes’ seem false. The relation between the eyes as sources of sensation, and the sexual eyes that are the ‘bay where all men ride’, is drawn explicitly.
        The potential confusion about the function of sexuality, because of its denial by the Master Mistress, and because of its effusive excess in the Mistress, leads to confusion as to the source of truth. Only a logical understanding of the truth and beauty dynamic leads to the possibility of discriminating between the ‘best’ and the ‘worst’.
        Sonnet 137 considers the conditions that prevent beauty or sensations from conveying the rational differentiation between right and wrong. The ‘beauty’ of the Mistress causes the Poet to consider the confusion of values that occurs when ‘judgment’ is based on sensations. Her ‘beauty’ leads his ‘heart and eyes to err’ because he neglects the logical role of the articulate mind. The attempt to articulate ‘truth’, or the relation between the ‘right’ and ‘false’, out of the eyes and heart fails. The confounded ‘judgment’ of the Poet’s heart, or the incapacity of the heart to ‘think’ or ‘know’, is matched by the inability of the ‘eyes’ to ‘say’.
        The improbability of the heart and eyes (the ‘blind fool love’ and the unseeing face) thinking, knowing, or saying, is symptomatic of the false expectation that sensation (particularly the ideal) is the source of ‘truth’. ‘Fair truth’ cannot be ascribed to the sensation derived from a ‘face’. The difference between ‘seeing’ and ‘saying’, in line 11, immediately before the word truth is introduced for the first time in the Mistress sonnets (in line 12), encapsulates the logical distinction between beauty as sensations and truth as the language-based activity of the mind.

3.78     Sonnet 138, the Mistress swears

Sonnet 137 begins with the consideration of the sensations derived from the external appearance of the Mistress. It concludes with a tacit recognition of the processes of thought that determine the relation between the ‘right’ and the ‘false’ or the dynamic of truth in language. In the first line of sonnet 138, the dynamic of truth is immediately identified with the process of language, or the capacity to rationally evaluate right and wrong.

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue,
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed:
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love, loves not t’have years told.
    Therefore I lye with her, and she with me,
    And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
                                    (Sonnet 138)

        This is the first time in the Mistress sonnets that the Mistress is given a voice or ‘says’ something (see especially lines 9 and 10). In the previous Mistress sonnets, consistent with the emphasis on beauty or sensation, she has been looked at or sensed in various ways.
        So the first line introduces the Mistress in conversation with the Poet. She ‘swears’ that she is made of ‘truth’. But truth in the philosophy of the Sonnets is not a singular quality. As the dynamic of truth is tied logically to language, it is manifested in the relation of the true and the false. The equivocal nature of truth is expressed in the Poet’s response.

I do believe her though I know she lies,
                                    (Sonnet 138.2)

        Beauty, as the mode of sensation, can establish no priority between fair and black from the mere experience of the sensation. Similarly truth, as the process of language manifesting the ‘endless jar’ between ‘right and wrong’, establishes no logical standards from within its own dynamic. The Sonnets have been at pains to present the logical relationship that enables the function of the truth and beauty dynamic. The primary template of nature, the Mistress and the Master Mistress, and the increase argument provide the logical conditions for the sensations of beauty and the determination (judgment) of right and wrong. Without an acceptance of natural logic, sensation and ideas become taste or opinion. By adhering to natural logic Shakespeare is able to avoid taste and opinion in his work and ensures the timelessness of the Sonnets and plays.
        Sonnet 138 explores the dynamic relationship between ‘true’ and ‘false’. The Mistress ‘swears’ she thinks the Poet is ‘some untutored youth’. The Poet’s witty response is to ‘simply credit (believe) her false speaking tongue’. He acknowledges that ‘both sides’ suppress the ‘simple truth’. She because she says she is just and he is young, and he because he ‘lies with her’ as they flatter each other’s faults. The resolution, for the Poet, is conveyed in the double image evoked by word ‘lie’. The mutual lie (tongue) of the Poet and the Mistress has its denouement in the act of ‘lying’ together in bed.
        For Shakespeare there is no ‘simple truth’ that is self-subsistent. Truth is the logical dynamic of true and false that are the ineradicable ingredients of every circumstance. This is blatantly so with the Mistress. Whereas the Master Mistress is blind to the evil consequences of the ideal, she is only too aware of the irony of calling the false true and the true false. She, as the source of the male and the Poet (as the male who appreciates the relation of the male and the female), intuitively appreciates that the truth and beauty dynamic derives its inherent logic and impetus from the initial structuring of the Sonnets.

3.79     Sonnet 139, the eye and the tongue

In sonnet 139, the Poet ‘calls’ on the Mistress not to have him ‘justify the wrong’ he senses when he looks into her ‘eye’.

O call not me to justify the wrong,
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart,
Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue,
Use power with power, and slay me not by Art.
Tell me thou lov’st else-where; but in my sight,
Dear heart forbear to glance thine eye aside,
What need’st thou wound with cunning when thy might
Is more than my o’er-pressed defence can bide?
Let me excuse thee ah my love well knows,
Her pretty looks have been mine enemies,
And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
That they else-where might dart their injuries:
    Yet do not so, but since I am near slain,
    Kill me out-right with looks, and rid my pain.
                                    (Sonnet 139)

        Logically the immediacy of sensation leaves no room for denial. The Poet would rather have her turn her ‘eye aside’ than have to answer her in words. He prefers the ‘wounding’ of her tongue, her playing with the double power of the true and false, to the direct evidence of her ‘Art’, the unworded sensations of her beauty.
        Beauty and truth are pitted against each other in a way that brings out their respective qualities. The Poet asks her to ‘tell’ him of her other loves rather than let him suffer in unconfirmed apprehension. The sensations he receives from the Mistress disturb his mind, but the thoughts they give rise to are more bearable than his pained feelings. He is willing to ‘excuse’ her fault if she turns her eye away. ‘Her pretty looks’ are his ‘enemies’ because he has no defence against the immediacy of sensation. He asks that she look ‘elsewhere’. Then, in the couplet, he seems to have a change of heart. Caught between the two possibilities, the ‘pretty looks’ and the tongue’s power, he decides that since he is ‘near’ dead with the pain of love she may as well finish him off by looking at him with her ‘eye’.
        The change from ‘eyes’ in sonnet 137 to the singular ‘eye’ in 139 provides the clue as to why the Poet capitulates in this sonnet. When the erotic undertones are brought to the surface the ‘eye’ becomes the ‘cunning’ (read cunt) thing that needs to be averted from the Poet’s gaze. The dynamic of truth and beauty, the two powers of the mind at odds in this sonnet, derives from the sexual dynamic of the increase argument. So the Poet’s decision to face the eye, or cunt, acknowledges the place where his desire will be ‘slain’ and his pain removed.
        The processes of language, the will’s determination of the correct relationship between right and wrong, and the ever-present effect of sensations, do not allow of a resolution from within the dynamic of truth and beauty or the mind. It is the constant refrain of the Sonnets from the increase argument onward that only recognition of the logical priority of increase brings the elements into alignment. The Poet having felt for and debated the issues, as each sonnet presents sensation and argument, the logical recourse is metaphorically to bed the Mistress, and live another day.

3.80     Sonnet 140, wise and cruel

The relationship between sensations and ideas, between feelings and words, between beauty and truth, continues in sonnet 140. The Poet beseeches the Mistress to be as ‘wise as thou art cruel’. His ‘tongue-tied patience’ could be pressed too far and force him to express his ‘sorrow’ in ‘words and words’. He offers to ‘teach thee wit’ so, if she does not love him, she could tell him directly. This would forestall a worse consequence that, if he ‘speaks ill’ of the Mistress, those words could be easily turned to slander. To avoid this he advises she keeps her ‘eyes straight’ even if her heart strays.

Be wise as thou art cruel, do not press
My tongue tied patience with too much disdain:
Least sorrow lend me words and words express,
The manner of my pity wanting pain.
If I might teach thee wit better it were,
Though not to love, yet love to tell me so,
As testy sick-men when their deaths be near,
No news but health from their Physicians know.
For if I should despair I should grow mad,
And in my madness might speak ill of thee,
Now this ill wresting world is grown so bad,
Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.
    That I may not be so, nor thou belied,
    Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.
                                    (Sonnet 140)

        The sonnet explicitly conveys the equivocal power of words. The feelings the Poet experiences are by their nature incommunicable except as a direct reception of a sensation. Words, though, which logically carry within them the possibility of truth (the power to be true or false at any instant), can represent a situation as either true or false. They, and particularly not any one word such as God, are not the source or guarantee of a universal truth. Through the Poet’s argument to the Mistress, Shakespeare demonstrates the equivocal nature of language and hence the futility of looking for a definitive truth even in words. Abiding by the logical structure out of nature, established at the beginning of the Sonnets, is the only basis for representing the dynamic of truth consistently.

3.81     Sonnets 141 and 142, analysis of truth

Sonnets 141 and 142 continue the analysis of the truth dynamic. Words such as ‘tongue’, ‘wits’, ‘dissuade’, ‘reproving’, ‘from those lips’, ‘false bonds’, indicate the issue of truth is being addressed. Despite the persistence of the truth and beauty dynamic in these sonnets the dynamic does not require a definitive expression. Because the truth and beauty dynamic is a logical condition for writing the sonnets in the first place, all that is required is an acknowledgement of its significance and an indication of its logical operation. The number of sonnets dedicated to the truth or beauty dynamic is not critical.

3.82     Sonnet 143, increase revisited

The relation between the ‘mother’ and ‘babe’ presented in sonnet 143 echoes that of the relation between the Mistress (and in the background the sovereign mistress) and the Master Mistress. The Poet, once a youth himself, is aware that the diversions distracting the Mistress need to be conditioned by the possibility of her return. Only then can that ‘mother’ kiss him and he give her his ‘Will’, and the increase argument be fulfilled.

Lo as a careful housewife runs to catch,
One of her feathered creatures broke away,
Sets down her babe and makes all swift dispatch
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay:
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent,
To follow that which flies before her face:
Not prizing her poor infant’s discontent;
So run’st thou after that which flies from thee,
Whilst I thy babe chase thee a far behind,
But if thou catch thy hope turn back to me:
And play the mother’s part kiss me, be kind.
    So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,
    If thou turn back and my loud crying still.
                                    (Sonnet 143)

3.83     Sonnet 144, the youth, the Mistress and the Poet

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still,
The better angel is a man right fair:
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
To win me soon to hell my female evil,
Tempteth my better angel from my sight,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil:
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turn’d fiend,
Suspect I may yet not directly tell,
But being both from me both to each friend,
I guess one angel in an other’s hell.
    Yet this shall I ne’er know but live in doubt,
    Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
                                    (Sonnet 144)

        Sonnet 144 is the fourth of four sonnets (the others being 133, 134 and 143) that introduce the Master Mistress into the Mistress sequence. The relation between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ in this sonnet is consistent with the treatment of truth and beauty in the other Mistress sonnets.

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
                                    (Sonnet 144.1)

        The Poet recognises the inalienable relation between the two poles of the truth dynamic. His ‘better angel’ and ‘worser spirit’ are the dual components of understanding. His relation to them is intimate.

But being both from me both to each friend.
                                    (Sonnet 144.11)

        He will ‘never know’ them in isolation.

    Yet this shall I ne’er know but live in doubt,
    Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
                                    (Sonnet 144.13-14)

        If the bad one does toss the good one out, then the dynamic reverts to the confused relation of truth and beauty weighted toward the ideal that epitomises the youth in the Master Mistress sonnets. A reversion to blind idealism, where only good exists, is not a logically sustainable option.

3.84     Sonnet 145, the source of Shakespeare’s poetry

Sonnet 145, even though it has a role in the subsidiary structure of the set of 154, recognises the influence of the truth dynamic. The Poet’s Mistress, identified by pun as Anne Hathaway, has a fully articulated speaking part. Her ‘lips’ breathe forth the sound that says ‘I hate’. Seeing the Poet’s ‘woeful state’ she taught her ‘tongue’ a new greeting that altered ‘I hate’ into ‘saying not you’.
        The interchange demonstrates the way in which expression in language (saying), and the effect of sensations such as love and hate, woefulness and mercy ‘straight from the heart’, can be altered to their opposites by being ‘taught anew’. The relation between beauty and truth, sensation and ideas is necessarily subject to change because truth is derived, in the form of language, directly from the range of sensations and emotions out of the groundedness of nature.

Those lips that Love’s own hand did make,
Breathed forth that sound that said I hate,
To me that languished for her sake:
But when she saw my woeful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue that ever sweet,
Was used in giving gentle doom:
And taught it thus a new to greet:
I hate she altered with an end,
That followed it as gentle day,
Doth follow night who like a fiend
From heaven to hell is flown away.
    I hate, from hate away she threw,
    And saved my life saying not you.
                                    (Sonnet 145)

3.85     Sonnet 146, the cost of souls

Sonnet 146, like sonnet 129, makes a statement that addresses the excesses of the institution that would call itself Mother Church. Like sonnet 129 it is placed in the Mistress sequence to highlight the relation between the Mistress, whose complex nature accommodates the logical relation between love and hate, true and false, and the derivation from the feminine that has a ‘poor soul’, the masculine ideal. The poverty of spirit leads to extravagant expense on outward appearance. The Poet asks if worms will inherit the excesses or if the old expectations will die away to be replaced by ‘terms divine’, or the tendency to ‘aggravate thy store’. Here increase is presented as the antidote to the poverty of spirit that must have been particularly evident to Shakespeare in his day. Accepting death and acknowledging the path to life through increase removes the spectre of dying.

Poor soul the centre of my sinful earth,
My sinful earth these rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body’s end?
Then soul live thou upon thy servant’s loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross:
Within be fed, without be rich no more,
    So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,
    And death once dead, there’s no more dying then.
                                    (Sonnet 146)

        It is symptomatic of the traditional misreading of the Sonnets that sonnet 146, along with sonnet 129, are called the great Christian sonnets. Not only does this reading misrepresent their content, it has led to the denigration of whole parts of the Sonnets that are antithetical to its expectations. This is especially so of the increase sonnets. The increase element in sonnet 146 is not directed at the Mistress. She is the locus of increase, the centre to which the youth needs to return. Rather, the force of sonnet 146 is directed at the Church that would usurp the Mother role as a compensation for the inadequacies of its masculine ideal.

3.86     Sonnet 147, truth reiterated

Just as sonnet 137 and then 138 reiterates the truth and beauty theme after the interlude of 135 and 136, sonnet 147 reinforces the truth dynamic after the interlude of 143 to 146. The connection is emphasised by the appearance of the word truth in line 12. The theme continues until 152 where ‘truth’ appears twice.
        Also worthy of note is the verbal activity of swearing that occurs in sonnets 131, 132, 136, 138, 147, 150 and 152. Initially it is the Poet who swears upon aspects of the Mistress’ beauty. Then, in 136, he asks if she is prepared to swear that he was her ‘Will’. Finally, in 138 she ‘swears’ (for the first time) ‘that she is made of truth’. In the last of the specifically beauty and truth sonnets, 152, they both swear, in a litany of swearing and oaths, around the possibility of truth. Swearing an oath is as definite a form of verbal communication as is possible to conceive. Vows and oaths are the most binding of intentional contracts made after intensive deliberation. Swearing is at the further end of the spectrum from the deep sensations aroused in the dynamic of love, whether sexual or ideal.
        Truth derives from the dynamic of beauty or sensation just as sexuality derives from the undifferentiated processes of asexual nature. For this reason, in the Mistress sonnets, beauty is considered first and then truth. Sonnet 147 mimics this logical situation by considering the effects of an excess of sensation (the emotion of love) and the tendency to see truth as consistent with only one possibility of the true/false dynamic.

My love is as a fever longing still,
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please:
My reason the Physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve,
Desire is death, which Physic did except.
Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,
And frantic mad with ever-more unrest,
My thoughts and my discourse as mad men’s are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed.
    For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
    Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
                                    (Sonnet 147)

        The ‘love’ the Poet feels for the Mistress is like a ‘fever’ which feeds on itself like a sickly appetite. His reason, which should be in control of his emotions, cannot proscribe his feelings. The effect of his feverish desire is that he may as well be dead to reason. He is past cure and ‘frantic mad’. In line 12 the cause of the separation of his reason and his emotions is identified. His ‘thoughts’ and ‘discourse’ are at variance with the dynamic of ‘truth’. Because of his residual tendency to idealism, he has called the Mistress fair in a way that doesn’t take account of her ‘blackness’.
        The dynamic of truth allows of no such misjudgment as it establishes the logical relationship between the fair and the black rather than focus on the ‘fair’ as the only valid response. Reducing truth to one pole of the possibilities reduces the rational process to that of undifferentiated sensation. This leads to the breakdown of reason and the disregard for the logic of the truth and beauty dynamic evoked in the sonnet.

3.87     Sonnets 148 to 150, truth and true sight

Sonnets 148, 149 and 150 continue the exploration of the relationship between seeing and saying. The dynamic of truth with its continual interplay between right and wrong, fair and black, true and false, is placed in its logical relation to the sensations that characterise beauty.
        The logical connection between the sexual, sensations and truth is revisited in sonnet 148. As in sonnet 139, the eyes are the vehicle for the double relationship. The ‘eyes’ that love has put in the Poet’s ‘head’ have no ‘correspondence to true sight’. Or, if they have then the Poet’s ‘judgment’ is awry because it ‘censures falsely’ what the eyes ‘see aright’. In the first quatrain the relationship between sensations as ‘true sight’ and the sayable as ‘judgments’ and ‘censuring’ is set in place.

O me! what eyes hath love put in my head,
Which have no correspondence with true sight,
Or if they have, where is my judgment fled,
That censures falsely what they see aright?
If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
What means the world to say it is not so?
If it be not, then love doth well denote,
Love’s eye is not so true as all men’s: no,
How can it? O how can love’s eye be true,
That is so vexed with watching and with tears?
No marvel then though I mistake my view,
The sun it self sees not, till heaven clears.
    O cunning love, with tears thou keep’st me blind,
    Least eyes well seeing thy foul faults should find.
                                    (Sonnet 148)

        The Poet puts himself in the position of the person who does not understand the increase, truth and beauty dynamic. Such a person must be confused because he does not appreciate the logical connection between the eye of ‘cunning love’ (the sexual eye) and the eye of judgment (the mind’s eye). The unwillingness to consider a person’s faults leads to the contradiction of the last line: ‘least eyes well seeing thy foul faults do find’.
        In sonnet 149, ‘saying’ is introduced in the first line: ‘Canst thou O cruel, say I love thee not’. The debate between truth and beauty persists until the couplet where the processes of the ‘mind’ and the ‘blindness’ of sensation are contrasted.

Canst thou O cruel, say I love thee not,
When I against my self with thee partake:
Do I not think on thee when I forgot
Am of my self, all tyrant for thy sake?
Who hateth thee that I do call my friend,
On whom frown’st thou that I do fawn upon,
Nay if thou lour’st on me do I not spend
Revenge upon my self with present moan?
What merit do I in my self respect,
That is so proud thy service to despise,
When all my best doth worship thy defect,
Commanded by the motion of thine eyes.
    But love hate on for now I know thy mind,
    Those that can see thou lov’st, and I am blind.
                                    (Sonnet 149)

        Similarly in sonnet 150, the seeming contradiction in loving someone who rationally seems bad, ‘in my mind thy worst all best exceeds’, is explored. Again swearing is chosen as the mode of ‘saying’ because of its unequivocal status as an operation of language.

Oh from what power hast thou this powerful might,
With insufficiency my heart to sway,
To make me give the lie to my true sight,
And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?
Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
That in the very refuse of thy deeds,
There is such strength and warranty of skill,
That in my mind thy worst all best exceeds?
Who taught thee how to make me love thee more,
The more I hear and see just cause of hate,
Oh though I love what others do abhor,
With others thou should’st not abhor my state.
    If thy unworthiness raised love in me,
    More worthy I to be beloved of thee.
                                    (Sonnet 150)

3.88     Sonnet 151, love and conscience

The full powers of reason are evoked in sonnets 151 and 152. Sonnet 151 brings the argument of the Mistress sequence to a focus by introducing the idea of the conscience. The first two lines of 151 encapsulate the Poet’s argument for the derivation of truth and beauty from the increase dynamic stated so definitively in sonnet 14. Love precedes conscience because sensation precedes the development of the rational faculty. In this sense conscience is born of the process of sensation that is epitomised in the act of love or increase.

Love is too young to know what conscience is,
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love,
Then gentle cheater urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove.
For thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body’s treason,
My soul doth tell my body that he may,
Triumph in love, flesh stays no further reason.
But rising at thy name doth point out thee,
As his triumphant prize, proud of this pride,
He is contented thy poor drudge to be
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
    No want of conscience hold it that I call,
    Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall.
                                    (Sonnet 151)

        In this penultimate of the specifically truth and beauty sonnets the Poet points to the direct link between the mind’s most decided operations in the dynamic of truth, the conscience, and the sexual act (as the basis of the increase argument). As the sonnet unfolds, the imagery becomes more suggestive until, in the final quatrain and the couplet, the process of conscious determination of right and wrong beats to the same pulse as the Poet’s pen/penis. Lines such as ‘rising at thy name doth point out thee’, ‘proud of this pride’, ‘to stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side’, and ‘for whose dear love I rise and fall’, point to the source, and hence the locus for the determination, of truth and beauty, in the conscience and love.
        The mutual ‘betrayal’ of the Poet and the Mistress of the nobler part (conscience) to the ‘gross body’s treason’ is no betrayal but a ‘triumph’ of the source of truth over its misrepresentations by those who seek a self-subsistent truth. The erotic romp in this sonnet prepares the way for sonnets 153 and 154.

3.89     Sonnet 152, truth unequivocal

Sonnet 152 contains a litany of references to the most conscious of all language-based processes, the swearing of an oath. Swear/sworn occurs 7 times, vow 3 times, oath 4 times (for 22 oaths altogether), perjury 2 times, faith 2 times and truth 2 times in a sonnet that relates the emotion of love (‘love’ five times plus one ‘hate’) to the dynamic of truth.

In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn,
But thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing,
In act thy bed vow broke and new faith torn,
In vowing new hate after new love bearing:
But why of two oaths breach do I accuse thee,
When I break twenty: I am perjured most,
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee:
And all my honest faith in thee is lost.
For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness:
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,
And to enlighten thee gave eyes to blindness,
Or made them swear against the thing they see.
    For I have sworn thee fair: more perjured eye,
    To swear against the truth so foul a lie.
                                    (Sonnet 152)

        At the beginning of the Mistress sonnets devoted to truth (sonnet 138), the Mistress ‘swears she is made of truth’. In this final sonnet, addressed directly to the truth and beauty dynamic, the Poet admits that whatever fault lies with the Mistress he is 10 times more guilty for swearing she was fair when the dynamic of truth logically prevents such an exclusive claim. Such a misguided swearing logically amounts to a ‘lie’.
        Truth, as embodied in the Mistress where ‘love, truth, and constancy’ are inseparable, is the relation between the fair and the foul. The ‘constancy’, or consistency of the Poet’s argument is based in the complete dynamic available in the Mistress sonnets. The idealising tendency of the Master Mistress or youth as residual persona of the Poet’s causes him to represent himself as a mature person who is still liable to be inconsistent.

3.90     Sonnets 153 and 154, the erotic finale

Sonnets 153 and 154 bring the Mistress sequence to a close with an unmistakable reminder of the primary source of truth and beauty. Their classical form and their eroticism leave no doubt that the issues addressed in the increase argument are the final recourse for the logical understanding of the truth and beauty dynamic. By casting them in a distinct mode, one associated with classical sensibilities, the Poet indicates the timelessness of his understanding. He also demonstrates the frequently asserted claim that his understanding transcends style. These two sonnets complete the set by returning the attention, with a literary flourish, back to the increase argument. (See 1.21 for a fuller discussion.)

3.91     Summary of truth and beauty in sonnets 20 to 154

Having considered the pervasive presence and significance of the words truth and beauty in sonnets 20 to 154, it should be apparent that the Mistress sequence provides the logically prior exposition of the dynamic. As a unity and as the entity prior to the male or the Master Mistress, the Mistress is the repository for understanding. Not only does the Master Mistress need to return to her for increase he also needs to assess the state of his understanding against the logic she manifests.
        When allowance is made for the sonnets that have a subsidiary function in the structuring of the whole set (128, 135/136, 145, and 153/154), and when account is taken of sonnets such as 129 and 146 that introduce a decidedly institutional critique, the other Mistress sonnets are organised intentionally into those that deal with beauty and those that deal with truth. It is patently the case that beauty is considered from sonnet 127 up to and including sonnet 137 and truth is considered from sonnets 137 to 152.
        As typical of the general process of ordering in the Sonnets, the arrangement of the sonnets that deal with beauty and those that deal with truth is not based on further categories. It is evident that sonnets 127 and 130 treat the logic of beauty decisively, that sonnet 137 makes the transition from beauty to truth, and sonnets 151 and 152 treat the logic of truth decisively. The clear separation of sonnets that consider ‘seeing’ from those that consider ‘saying’ is the only internal organisation required in the Mistress sonnets (Diag 31).

        The organisation of the Mistress sonnets accords with the logical requirement that beauty (sensation) is prior to truth (ideas). The argument of the Master Mistress sequence is then directed at the logical misalignment of his understanding of truth and beauty (Diag 32). Because his understanding of the sexual dynamic is awry then his understanding of truth and beauty is awry.

        Before examining the relation of the truth and beauty dynamic to the traditional notions of ideas and sensation and ethics and aesthetics, other features of the set intentionally introduced by Shakespeare to symbolise its logical relationships deserve attention. Closer consideration will be given to the Rose and the Muse, and the significance of the eyes.

3.92     The Rose and the Muse

Throughout the presentation of the truth and beauty dynamic, the Rose and the Muse have had a part to play in giving an image or a face to the concepts of beauty and truth. The Rose and the Muse offer another way in which to characterise the beauty and truth dynamic. By giving evocative names to the logical elements of the philosophy, the Sonnets define and align both rational and sensory elements. By making full use of the poetic possibilities of the sonnet form to convey his philosophy, Shakespeare is able to present both his arguments and their sensory equivalents.
        As has been shown, the principal entities in the philosophy have names that are logically precise. Nature is called the sovereign mistress, the female is called the Mistress, the male is called the Master Mistress and the writer of the set is called the Poet. In keeping with process of giving precise names to the significant aspects of the philosophy, beauty and truth are associated with the clichéd poetic devices of Rose and Muse. As with his investigation of the logic of truth and beauty, Shakespeare imposes a logical role on these terms.
        Except for the sovereign mistress, proper names are consistently capitalised throughout the set (other than for sonnet 153 where, inconsistent with ‘Mistress’ in sonnet 154, two instances of mistress do not have capitals). This rule does not apply to general concepts. Words such as nature, time, truth, beauty, or the states such as the seasons, appear with and without capitals according to Shakespeare’s need to emphasise within the context of a sonnet.
        As the Rose and the Muse are capitalised throughout (except for one adjectival use of ‘rosy’ in sonnet 116), it is reasonable to expect they are the names for particular entities in the Sonnets. The removal of the capital R and S in most modern editions of the Sonnets destroys the integrity of that possibility. By adopting and adapting the names Rose and Muse as representatives for the concepts of beauty and truth Shakespeare is able to characterise beauty and truth both as logical concepts and symbolic entities. In doing so he evokes a more complete sense of their role in logic of life.

3.93     The Rose and Eros

In the Sonnets the Rose is characterised both as ‘beauty’s Rose’ and as Eros (Cupid the Love God in sonnets 153 and 154), who arises anagrammatically from the word Rose. The derivation of Eros from the word Rose captures Shakespeare’s appreciation that the overt sense of conventional beauty associated with the Rose derives logically from the increase dynamic. The play on words suggests the possibility of the development of language, or truth, out of the processes of sensation.
        Eros occurs disguised in the second line of the first sonnet because the erotic possibility is implicit in the sexual logic of the Sonnets. The erotic sensibility surfaces in sonnet 20 after an initial indication of its potentiality as the pen/penis in sonnet 16. To complement the appearance of the Rose in sonnet 1, Eros appears as Cupid in the last two sonnets of the set 153 and 154 to assert unequivocally the significance of the erotic for an understanding of the Sonnet philosophy.
        The derivation of Eros from the Rose is consistent with the relation between the Rose as a symbol of ideal beauty that conceals a canker or thorn. Because the youth sequence critiques the idealism of youth, it contains most of the occurrences of the Rose except for its appearance in sonnet 130 where it features twice. There it is mentioned in reference to the difference between the exaggerated sense of the ideal that typifies the youth and the complete dynamic of beauty and truth inherent in the Mistress. The particular sense of beauty associated with the Rose, and typified in the youth, is derived from the complete dynamic embodied in the Mistress. In the Mistress it is subsumed amongst her complex of potentialities. Its more frequent occurrence in the youth sequence is symptomatic of the male’s limited sensibility.

3.94     The 9 Muses of old

The name Muse, in its role as the inspiration for expression in language, recalls the ‘9 Muses of old’ (sonnet 38). The 9 Muses were associated with the different arts: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Euterpe (fluteplaying), Melpomene (tragedy), Terpsichore (dancing), Erato (the lyre), Polyhymnia (sacred song), Urania (astronomy), and Thalia (comedy).
        In the Sonnets, though, such detail is not of interest. Shakespeare associates the 9 Muses of old collectively with the youth and the Alien Poet. Because neither the youth nor the Alien Poet specifically recognise the connection between nature, increase and truth and beauty (as the basis for expression) they lack the component the Poet identifies as essential to a consistent understanding. He proposes the addition of another Muse, the tenth, to bring the number up to the necessary 10 for a philosophic unity (see sonnet 38).
        The Muse is confined to the youth sonnets. The Muse, as the representative of thought, ideas, and argument, (as evident in the dynamic of language and particularly in the process of writing), can only occur in the youth sonnets. The six occurrences of the word argument, for instance, are in the youth sonnets. The Muse does not occur in the Mistress sequence because the possibility of writing (as against the logic of saying) is not addressed in the Mistress sonnets. Writing is introduced in the poetry and increase sonnets, which immediately precede the introduction of the Muse in sonnets 20/21.
        The separation of the male from the female is a precondition for the logic of saying and hence for the possibility of writing. The coexistence of masculine and feminine personae in the Master Mistress and the Mistress identifies the masculine characteristic as the logical pre-requisite for thought. For this reason the Muse is feminine. It is the element required by the masculine mind to achieve unity. The possibility is echoed in the organisation of the Sonnets with the division into Master Mistress and Mistress sequences. The arrangement prefigures the requirement that the 9 Muses in the thought of the Master Mistress return for unity to the 1 Muse generic in the Mistress.
        It is symptomatic of the logical division of attributes associated with the Muses that the issue of immortality is not addressed in the Mistress sequence but is addressed persistently in the Master Mistress sequence. The Poet does not promise the Mistress poetic immortality as a consequence of her being mentioned in the Sonnets. The issue does not arise for the Mistress because she is the natural repository of increase and hence of the complete dynamic of beauty and truth, or the possibility of poetry. The youth is the one who needs an explanation of the distinction between the logic of immortality available through increase and the limited immortality through poetry promised by the 9 Muses.

3.95     Sonnet 1, beauty’s Rose

The Rose is introduced in the first sonnet, and is immediately associated with beauty as ‘beauty’s Rose’. The Rose is an appropriate flower with which to characterise the logic of the beautiful because its ‘beauty’ diverts attention from its less favourable attributes. The Rose appears idealistically or sentimentally beautiful because its beauty conceals its ‘canker’, ‘thorn’, or ‘shadow’. It is the symbol of the ideal that conceals the antithesis to the ideal within its singular or idealised effect.
        The Rose is also the symbol for the sexual organs of both female and male. The word Rose (with its anagram Eros) is a self-contained symbol for the singularity of sensations that have their most intense expression in the sex act and its accompanying erotics. The heightened sensation surrounding Eros capitalises on the unexpressed intensity of its concealed opposite.
        The logic of the Rose as beauty is the basis behind the intensity of religious experience where the erotic in myth intensifies the denial of the logic of sexual consequences. (In Measure for Measure, Angelo and Isabella are representatives of the singular ideal that conceals its opposite. The play examines the consequences of idealism and its resolution in the logic of increase with the alliance of the Duke and Isabella.) The Rose is both the image of the ideal and, through Eros, the symbol of desire or erotic sensation.
        The phrase ‘beauty’s Rose’ is part oxymoronic. As a tautology, where the beauty of the Rose is highlighted, it is a double affirmation of the conventional sense of beauty. As a contradiction or oxymoron it points to the double nature of the Rose as both beautiful and simultaneously concealing a canker. The phrase valorises the ideal while at the same moment, in accordance with the dynamic of sensation and ideas, subverts it.

3.96     Sonnet 35, the cankered Rose

The double nature of the Rose is made clear in sonnet 35. In consoling the youth the Poet draws his attention to the contradictions inherent in any form of idealism. Beauty, as a sensation, is capable of arousing either admiration or loathing.

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done,
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,
Clouds and eclipses stain both Moon and Sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
                                    (Sonnet 35.1-4)

3.97     Sonnet 54, the Rose and truth

If sonnet 1 introduces the Rose and beauty, and sonnet 35 exposes the thorns and canker, sonnet 54 is devoted entirely to an exploration of the relation of beauty, the Rose, and truth. The word Rose occurs three times as does the notion of beauty, and truth appears twice.

Oh how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give,
The Rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour, which doth in it live:
The Canker blooms have full as deep a dye,
As the perfumed tincture of the Roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,
When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:
But for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwooed, and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet Roses do not so,
Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:
    And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
    When that shall vade, by verse distils your truth.
                                    (Sonnet 54)

        Sonnet 14 made the relation of truth to beauty conditional upon the possibility of increase. Sonnet 54 explores the logic of the relationship. First, the logical connection between truth and beauty is acknowledged. Beauty is more beauteous when compared to the ‘sweet ornament’ of truth. The youth is compared to two types of Roses. The first is a Rose that ‘looks fair’ and gives off a ‘sweet odour’ (‘we deem it fairer’ by the ‘sweet odour’ which in it lives). Beauty is identified as having a logical relationship to the life process whereby new life emerges from life already existing. The ‘sweet ornament’ derived from the Rose is the child that lives in the fair Rose like a sweet scent waiting to be revealed. Truth derives from the capacity of the human being to increase.
        The ‘fair Rose’ is then contrasted with the ‘Canker blooms’ which look the same (‘have full as deep a dye’) but ‘live unwooed’ and ‘die to themselves’. The cankered Roses represent the youth if he fails to acknowledge the significance of increase. The youth must choose between reproducing his ‘beauty’ or seeing it die ‘unrespected’. The truth dynamic provides the youth with a clearly defined choice.
        It is through the medium of verse (‘by verse’) that the ‘truth’ of the situation is articulated as ‘fair’ or ‘cankered’. For the youth, truth is apparent in the logic of his choice. If he remains true to his selfish idealism his line of descent dies. If he is true to the logic of beauty his line of descent persists.

3.98     Sonnets 67 and 68, the Rose and store

Even more definitively than the previous sonnets, sonnets 67 and 68 examine the relationship of ‘beauty’ and the ‘Rose’. They are directly related in sonnet 67, and beauty is mentioned a further four times in sonnet 68, the logical rejoinder to sonnet 67. The double nature of the Rose as ‘true’ or ‘shadow’ reflects the equivocal nature of beauty as a sensation. Does beauty reside in the application of ‘false painting’ to the cheeks or in being ‘true’ to nature? The logic for determining the appropriate answer derives from the increase argument (as it did in sonnet 54). The mention of the word ‘store’ in sonnets 67 and 68 and the implication that nature uses the youth as a map for future generations establishes the logical relation to increase.

Why should poor beauty indirectly seek
Roses of shadow, since his Rose is true?
Why should he live, now nature bankrupt is,
Beggared of blood to blush through lively veins,
For she hath no exchequer now but his,
And proud of many, lives upon his gains?
    O him she stores, to show what wealth she had,
    In days long since, before these last so bad.
                                    (Sonnet 67.7-14)

Thus is his cheek the map of days out-worn,
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now.
Before these bastard signs of fair were born,
Or durst inhabit on a living brow:
Before the golden tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchers, were shorn away,
To live a second life on second head,
Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay:
In him those holy antique hours are seen,
Without all ornament, it self and true,
Making no summer of an other’s green,
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new,
    And him as for a map doth Nature store,
    To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
                                    (Sonnet 68)

3.99     Sonnets 95 and 98, truth from the Rose

The pattern from sonnets 67 and 68, and the same rationale, is followed in sonnet 95.

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,
Which like a canker in the fragrant Rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name?
(Sonnet 95.1-3)

        The Poet advises the youth to ‘take heed’ (95.13) that ‘beauty’s’ capacity to ‘cover every blot’ (95.11) and turn all things to fair, doesn’t blunt his critical edge.
        In sonnet 98, in the youth’s absence, the Rose fails to create a sense of ‘wonder’ in the Poet. To the Poet it still seems like Winter because even the flowers are but shadows of the youth’s beauty.

Nor did I wonder at the Lilies’ white,
Nor praise the deep vermillion in the Rose,
They were but sweet, but figures of delight:
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
    Yet seemed it Winter still, and you away,
    As with your shadow I with these did play.
                                    (Sonnet 98.9-14)

3.100     Sonnet 99, the Poet’s blushing shame

In sonnet 99, the Rose is one of a series of flowering plants used to characterise an offence given the Poet. Here the Rose is emblematic of the beauty of a sonnet or poem. The Poet accuses the ‘sweet thief’ of stealing ‘sweet that smells’ or poetry from his ‘love’s breath’. Three Roses are identified as standing out from amongst the rest as if ‘fearful’ of the surrounding thorns or lesser poetry.
        The first imitates the Poet’s verse, to his embarrassment or ‘blushing shame’. (The emendation of ‘our’ to ‘one’ by editors destroys this reading of the Poet’s concern and replaces it with a simplistic act of numbering one to three.) ‘Another’ of the thief’s mis-appropriations drives the Poet to ‘white despair’, and a third, ‘nor red nor white’, imitates the qualities of the youth, making the Poet wish ‘a vengeful canker would eat (the thief) up to death’.

The forward violet thus did I chide,
Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
If not from my love’s breath, the purple pride,
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells?
In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly died,
The Lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair,
The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
Our blushing shame, an other white despair:
A third nor red, nor white, had stol’n of both,
And to his robb’ry had annexed thy breath,
But for his theft in pride of all his growth
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
    More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
    But sweet, or colour it had stolen from thee.
                                    (Sonnet 99)

3.101     Sonnet 109, the universal Rose/Eros

The relation of the beauty of the Rose to the ideal beauty of the youth is celebrated in sonnet 109. This is the final appearance of the Rose in the Master Mistress sonnets.

    For nothing this wide Universe I call,
    Save thou my Rose, in it thou art my all.
                                    (Sonnet 109.13-14)

        The identification of the youth with the Poet identifies the youth as either a youthful acquaintance of the Poet or as his youthful persona. As a persona of the Poet the youth can be called his ‘all’ without contradiction.

3.102     Sonnet 130, the Mistress’ Rose

In sonnet 130, the beauty of the Rose is contrasted with the complex sensations the Poet receives from the Mistress. The dark side of the youth is identified within the complex nature of the Mistress in whom the ideal is subsumed.

I have seen Roses damasked, red and white,
But no such Roses see I in her cheeks,
                                    (Sonnet 130.5-6)

        In the Mistress sonnets the Poet questions the standard of beauty that traditionally has been derived from the idealised image of youth.

3.103     The Muse

The word Muse occurs 17 times in the sonnets to the Master Mistress. Like the Rose, Muse is capitalised each time. Editors of the Sonnets have consistently decapitalised the two words in their ignorance of their function in the sequence.
        The Muses are referred to variously as ‘that Muse’, ‘my friend’s Muse’, ‘my Muse’, ‘the tenth Muse’, ‘all the Muses’. As each instance is examined, the constant factor is the association with forms of language. Thought, argument, words, or verse are connected directly with the Muse in every case. The most explicit statement of the relation of the Muse to truth and beauty is made in sonnet 101.
        Unlike the Rose, the Muse is not mentioned in the increase sonnets because increase is a physical process prior to the possibility of language and particularly the writing of a philosophy in poetry. The Muse is absent from the Mistress sequence because the logic of writing is addressed in the youth sonnets. The Mistress does not need inspiration from the Muses because logically she is the source of inspiration. She is the tenth Muse necessary for philosophic unity.
        The poetry and increase sonnets (15 to 19) acknowledge the irony of the Poet arguing for an understanding that derives from the physical body in the increase sonnets. After the watershed of sonnet 14, the mention of truth and beauty in sonnet 17 of the poetry and increase sonnets sets the scene for formal introduction of the Muse as the representative of the truth dimension of the truth and beauty dynamic in sonnet pair 20/21.
        Before the Muse appears in sonnet 21, sonnet 20 focuses on the external appearance (beauty) of the youth. He is a young man with residual female characteristics but undeniable male appendages. The image of a male with ‘a woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted’ is in keeping with the biological derivation of the male from the female. It identifies the youth with the increase process.
        The possibility of Nature ‘dressed’ up in sonnet 20 signals a change from the female/male dynamic of the first 19 sonnets to a feminine/masculine dynamic. This is captured in the youth’s name, the Master Mistress, with its indication that the youth is a male derived from the all-encompassing Mistress. The introduction of personae at this point is an indication of the change from bodily issues centered logically on the sexual to those of the mind that are inherently erotic. The shift establishes the logical condition for a consistent presentation of the dynamic of truth and beauty, making possible the introduction of the Muse.

3.104     Sonnet 21, the lesser Muse

The Muse is introduced in the first line of sonnet 21. Whereas the Rose characterises the singular nature of sensations of beauty, the Muse characterises the diversity in understanding constitutive of the give and take that is the dynamic of truth. The first Muse introduced is that of the Alien Poets. The Master Mistress sonnets address the inadequacies of the youth’s idealism. The Alien Poets typify the inadequacy, and their 9 Muses of ‘old’ represent the inadequacy. The inspiration derived from a ‘painted beauty’ leads to its expression in inferior verse.

So is it not with me as with that Muse,
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven it self for ornament doth use,
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare
With Sun and Moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems:
With April’s first born flowers and all things rare,
That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems,
O let me true in love but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair,
As any mother’s child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air.
    Let them say more that like of hear-say well,
    I will not pray that purpose not to sell.
                                    (Sonnet 21)

        Sonnet 20, with its focus on visual appearances, makes no mention of verse or writing. Sonnet 21, which introduces the Muse, makes writing the major issue. The connection between the Muse and ‘truly writing’ associates this first mention of the Muse with the dynamic of truth.

3.105     Sonnet 32, the Poet’s Muse

In sonnet 32, the Muse is the Poet’s Muse, the one extra Muse required for unity, (when added to the 9 Muses of old identified with the Alien Poets). The Poet seemingly ridicules his ‘poor rude lines’ when comparing his verse to that of lesser poets who excel in style and rhyme. He accepts the consequences of holding to the less appealing realisation that ‘love’, out of the increase argument, is the quality for which his poetry will be remembered. The youth suggests (32.10-14) the Poet’s Muse has not ‘grown with this growing age’.
        Yet the reality is, as the Poet (and Shakespeare) knows only too well, the ‘love’ expressed in sonnet 9 of the increase argument, develops to become the mature love expressed throughout the Sonnets, and sets the Sonnets apart from all other love poetry. The unity of the Poet (145 = 1) is based on the combination of the youth’s Muse’s 9 and the necessary 1 of the Mistress (represented by the 10th Muse).

These poor rude lines of thy deceased Lover:
Compare them with the bettering of the time,
And though they be out-stripped by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
Oh then vouchsafe me but this loving thought,
Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought
To march in ranks of better equipage:
    But since he died and Poets better prove,
    Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love.
                                    (Sonnet 32.3-14)

3.106     Sonnet 38, the Muses reconciled

Sonnet 38 makes explicit the relation between the 9 Muses of old and the one extra Muse required for a consistent philosophy. The word Muse is mentioned three times. The Poet calls on the influence of youth to inspire his Muse (‘my Muse’) with ‘sweet argument’ so that the 9 Muses of old, the Muses of mere rhymers, can, by the addition of the Poet’s tenth, ‘bring forth eternal numbers to outlive long date’.
        This is a direct reference to the numerological structure of the Sonnets that brings the disconnected ideals of the youth (9) into alignment with his relation to the Mistress (1). She represents the youth’s propensity to achieve lasting immortality through increase. The 9 Muses and the Poet’s Muse are aligned (9+1 = 10 = 1+0 = 1) because the youth needs to understand the philosophic significance of increase to lift his expression above that of heartless rhymers.

How can my Muse want subject to invent
While thou dost breathe that pour’st into my verse,
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent,
For every vulgar paper to rehearse:
Oh give thy self the thanks if ought in me,
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight,
For who’s so dumb that cannot write to thee,
When thou thy self dost give invention light?
Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate,
And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth
Eternal numbers to out-live long date.
    If my slight Muse do please these curious days,
    The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.
                                    (Sonnet 38)

3.107     Sonnets 78 to 86 to the Alien Poet

The Muse next features in the 9 Alien Poet sonnets (78 to 86), grouped immediately after the half-way point of the set. The concentration of 9 sonnets mentions the Muse five times. This is in keeping with the focus in the Sonnets on the relative merits of the writing in the Poet’s sonnets to those of the lesser Poets. Appropriately, in the relation between the Poet’s and inferiors’ poetry, the ‘beauty’ of the youth is only of interest as a quality recorded in verse.
        The Muse, as the inspiration for the use of language in the form of writing, is associated with language in a way that challenges traditional expectations that truth lies in the imitation of the youth’s looks. Truth in the Sonnets is the dynamic of judgment through language that receives its inherent logic from its relation to the increase dynamic in nature.
        Sonnet 78 mentions ‘Muse’ in the first line. The Poet has invoked the youth as his Muse because he knows that the logical basis of love resides in the capacity of youth to increase. Alien Poets have imitated the Poet’s work but have failed to see past its poetic skill into its philosophic depths.

So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse,
And found such fair assistance in my verse,
As every Alien pen hath got my use,
And under thee their poesy disperse.
…
In other’s works thou dost but mend the style,
And Arts with thy sweet graces graced be.
    But thou art all my art, and dost advance
    As high as learning, my rude ignorance.
                                    (Sonnet 78.1-14)

        In sonnet 79, the Poet’s unwillingness to praise the ‘lovely argument’ of the youth leads to the youth’s disenchantment with the Poet’s writing. The Poet’s ‘sick Muse’ has given place to another. By self deprecatorily calling his Muse ‘sick’ the Poet highlights the inadequacy of ‘Alien’ Poets. He accuses them of stealing from the youth the qualities they use to elevate their poetry. It is the youth’s Muse who is ‘sick’ or lacking the necessary element for a consistent understanding. His preference for the poetic skills of the lesser Poets, rather than the content of the Poet’s verse, mitigates against his natural potential to be the logically complete Muse required by the Poet, and against his becoming a mature Poet in his own right.

Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,
My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,
But now my gracious numbers are decayed,
And my sick Muse doth give another place.
I grant (sweet love) thy lovely argument
Deserves the travail of a worthier pen,
Yet what of thee thy Poet doth invent,
He robs thee of, and pays it thee again,
He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word,
From thy behaviour, beauty doth he give
And found it in thy cheek: he can afford
No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live.
    Then thank him not for that which he doth say,
    Since what he owes thee, thou thy self dost pay.
                                    (Sonnet 79)

        The relationship between the Poet’s Muse, and the potential for the youth to be the Poet’s Muse is examined in sonnet 82. The presumption that they might be one and the same is negated by the Poet’s statement that the youth was not ‘married’ to ‘my Muse’. The youth is an inspiration to the Poet, in the sense that the 9 Muses of old are an inspiration. The youth also has natural qualities, such as his capacity to increase, but he lacks the necessary insight to appreciate their philosophic significance and so remains at the level of inferior Poets. His fascination with the skill of the lesser Poets makes him less than adequate as a complete Muse for the Poet.

I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,
And therefore mayst without attaint o’er-look
The dedicated words which writers use
Of their fair subject, blessing every book.
Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hew,
Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,
And therefore art enforced to seek anew,
Some fresher stamp of the time bettering days.
And do so love, yet when they have devised,
What strained touches Rhetoric can lend,
Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathised.
In true plain words, by thy true telling friend.
    And their gross painting might be better used,
    Where cheeks need blood, in thee it is abused.
                                    (Sonnet 82)

        In sonnet 85, the Poet’s Muse (the one more) remains deliberately tongue-tied. She keeps her tongue ‘still’. This is in contrast to the comments of rich praise (‘reserve their character with golden quill’) the youth receives from ‘all the Muses’ (the old 9) of the ‘Alien’ Poet. The Poet keeps his ‘good thoughts’ to himself, or bites his tongue, while the ‘other’ or ‘Alien’ Poet ‘writes good words’ but nothing of substance. The ‘Alien’ Poet is no better than an ‘unlettered clerk’ who conceals his inadequacy with mindless ‘Amens’ and ‘Hymns’ of well-polished form.
        The Poet bites his tongue knowing that any inferior Poet praise lacks what his thoughts add, a type of love that ‘ranks before’ their empty words. The logical relation in the Sonnets, starting with nature, involving the increase dynamic, and finding its realisation and expression in the truth and beauty dynamic creates an understanding of love that can only stand tongue-tied at the effusive emptiness of the ‘Alien’ Poets.

My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,
While comments of your praise richly compiled,
Reserve their Character with golden quill,
And precious phrase by all the Muses filed.
I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words,
And like unlettered clerk still cry Amen,
To every Hymn that able spirit affords,
In polished form of well refined pen.
Hearing you praised, I say ’tis so, ’tis true,
And to the most of praise add some-thing more,
But that is in my thought, whose love to you
(Though words come hind-most) holds his rank before.
    Then others, for the breach of word’s respect,
    Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.
                                    (Sonnet 85)

3.108     Sonnets 100 to 103, the definitive Muse

In sonnet 85 the Poet’s Muse remained steadfastly silent in the face of the inflated verse of the ‘Alien’ Poet. In sonnet 100, he invokes his Muse three times. He asks her to ‘speak’ of that which makes her stand apart from the ‘old nine’. The ‘worthless song’ and ‘base subjects’ of the inferior Poets are not worth spending her constrained fury upon. The return of the Poet’s Muse will ‘redeem’ with both ‘skill and argument’ and ‘gentle numbers’.
        Not only are the verses or ‘numbers’ inspired by this Muse, the reference to numbers recalls the 1 that must be added to the youth’s 9 to make 10. The adding of the 1 of the Poet’s Muse to the 9 of the Muses of old, gives ‘his pen’ both the ‘skill’ (which the ‘Alien’ Poets have) and the ‘argument’ (which they lack). The return of the ‘resty Muse’ will ensure that the youth will survive the scythe of time because the Poet’s Muse is the Muse of the Mistress and so the logical connection to increase. Only through increase can the Muse give the youth (the Poet’s ‘love’) ‘fame’ faster than time wastes life. The decided association of the Muse with the possibility of argument makes it clear that the Muse is an agent of truth, or of the dynamic of language.

Where art thou Muse that thou forgetst so long,
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spendst thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light.
Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,
In gentle numbers time so idly spent,
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,
And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
Rise resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey,
If time have any wrinkle graven there,
If any, be a Satire to decay,
And make time’s spoils despised every where.
                                    (Sonnet 100.1-12)

        Sonnet 101 was discussed earlier in this Part on truth and beauty (see 3.33). Following as it does on sonnet 100, which makes clear the connection of the Muse and argument, sonnet 101 is even more explicit as to the relation of truth and beauty and the role of the Muse. The youth’s Muse is accused of neglecting ‘truth’ to the extent that truth has become subsumed in beauty. This was the lament of the last few Muse sonnets where the focus of the ‘Alien’ Poets on the youth’s beauty alone has seen the lowering of poetic and philosophic standards.
        The Poet avows that his love depends on both truth and beauty. The Muse must assert (‘make answer Muse’) that truth ‘needs no colour’ and that beauty needs ‘no pencil’ with which to write. They function at their best if their respective conditions are not confused or ‘intermixed’. As in sonnet 100, the sonnet ends with a reminder of the increase argument, which both powers the truth and beauty dynamic and ensures the possibility of the youth appearing in his progeny as he looks now, or ‘as he shows now’.

Oh truant Muse what shall be thy amends,
For thy neglect of truth
in beauty died? Both truth and beauty on my love depends:
So doth thou too, and therein dignified:
Make answer Muse, wilt thou not haply say,
Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,
Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay:
But best is best, if never intermixed.
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so, for’t lies in thee,
To make him much out-live a gilded tomb:
And to be praised of ages yet to be.
    Then do thy office Muse, I teach thee how,
    To make him seem long hence, as he shows now.
                                    (Sonnet 101)

        In sonnet 103, the Poet reflects on the function of the Muse. The argument, inspired by the Muse and recorded in the sonnets, can be no more than words. When the Poet’s Muse is added to the other 9, the ‘added praise’ of the youth’s combination of truth and beauty and increase is itself rhetoric if its connection to reality is not validated. If the youth looks in his glass he will see a face that surpasses the Poet’s ‘dull lines’ because, in keeping with the logic of the sonnets, increase or the physical dynamic, is prior to truth and beauty. For the Poet, his argument is self evident in the living youth. His task has been to get the youth to see (in the mirror) that the sonnets or ‘verses’ tell both of his ‘graces’ (like the ‘Alien’ Poets) and his ‘gifts’ (the gift to pass life to succeeding generations).

Alack what poverty my Muse brings forth,
That having such a scope to show her pride,
The argument all bare is of more worth
Than when it hath my added praise beside.
Oh blame me not if I no more can write!
Look in your glass and there appears a face,
That over-goes my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.
Were it not sinful than striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well,
For to no other pass my verses tend,
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell.
    And more, much more than in my verse can fit,
    Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.
                                    (Sonnet 103)

        Where the Muse occurs in the sequence to the youth, it is always associated with the processes of language, verse, thought, poetry, argument, or writing. The Poet makes a distinction between the Muse that merely responds like a ‘painted beauty to his verse’, and his own capacity to ‘true in love but truly write’. For the Poet love and truth are inseparable. His Muse provides the argument to compliment his feelings of love founded in the logic of increase in sonnet 9.
        The Muse of rhymers is contrasted with the Muse of the Poet who presents the argument in verse about the nature of love. The Poet acknowledges the youth’s ‘fair assistance’ as a Muse for the writing of his verse. He contrasts the youth’s logical influence on his ‘learning’ against the influence of the youth’s ‘sweet graces’ on the stylistic verse of others.

3.109     The eyes, the source of truth and beauty

So far the presence and influence of the logic of truth and beauty have been demonstrated and their symbolic representation as the Muse and the Rose has been considered. At each stage, the definitive statement of the increase/truth and beauty dynamic in the last few lines of sonnet 14 and the consideration of the status of poetry in the poetry and increase sonnets (15 to 19) has established the logical basis for the presentation of the dynamic in the sonnets 20 to 154.
        The examination of the truth and beauty dynamic in the youth sequence considered its function as the philosophic structure relating ideas and sensations and demonstrated its capacity to provide an inherent order for other themes and ideas. The examination of the dynamic in the Mistress sequence revealed a deliberate arrangement of the sonnets on the basis of beauty and then truth. The Rose and the Muse were appropriated (as Rose and Eros and the 9 Muses and the 1 more Muse) to symbolise the logic of beauty and truth.
        To emphasise the derivation of these concepts and symbols from the nature/increase dynamic, Shakespeare employs the sensory faculty of the ‘eyes’ to represent the relation between the body and the mind. By focusing on the visual process, he uses the function of the eyes as the intermediaries between the world about and the activities of the mind. Then, by way of a visual pun, he relates the eyes of the face to the ‘eyes’ of the sexual organs. In the Sonnets, the metaphor is exploited to the extent that the cheeks of the face and the cheeks of the buttocks and thighs are synonymous (see sonnet 116). The derivation of the eye of the mind from the sexual eye of the body is analogous to the derivation of Eros or desire from the Rose.
        The choice of the eyes as the source of the truth and beauty dynamic is consistent with the recognition of nature as the source of the sexual dynamic. In the increase sonnets, Shakespeare uses the single most significant feature of the body, its sexual nature, to establish the fundamental logic of the Sonnets. To express the relationship between increase and truth and beauty he uses the most significant or archetypal sensory organ, the eye, using the visual process to characterise the logical dynamic of the mind.
        The Sonnets not only demonstrate the correct relationship, or the correct multiplicity, between the body and the mind in terms of the logical connection between increase and truth and beauty, they also identify the source of truth and, beauty. The physiognomic feature most associated with the determination of truth and the experience of beauty, are the eyes. Because the human mind derives its logical operation from the sexual template, then an image common to both can characterise its operation. Shakespeare uses the eyes as the physiological feature to give philosophic expression to the two-way relationship.
        Shakespeare’s choice of the eyes as the locus of his intent performs the double function of providing an image readily identified with the process of understanding and of giving a metaphorically precise characterisation of its philosophic unity. The image of the human eyes simultaneously represents the visual organs, and the human sexual organs. Shakespeare’s deliberate use of bodily attributes goes beyond the object symbolism of Stephane Mallarmé into a precise mythic expression of the logical conditions for art.
        In Mallarmé’s poems single images function both as identifiable objects in the world and as metaphors for the sexual organs. Eroticised images of a fan, a vase, a mandolin, a window, the neck of a swan, abound in his work. But Mallarmé does not use the erotic potential of the eye. As an image that relates the logic of body and mind, its absence bears on his inability to move beyond deep symbolism to create mythic poetry (see the essay on Mallarmé in Volume 4).

3.110     Sonnet 14, knowledge from the eyes

The relation of increase to truth and beauty is expressed through the image of the eyes. In sonnet 14, the pivotal sonnet in the whole set of 154 sonnets, the source of truth and beauty is clearly identified as ‘thine eyes’. In the third quatrain, the Poet avows he derives his ‘knowledge’ from the youth’s eyes.
        Knowledge in the Sonnets is the sum of the ideas and sensations that characterise the activity of the mind. Because ideas and sensations are represented by truth and beauty, then the Poet derives his truth and beauty from the youth’s eyes. As outlined above, this is possible because of the logical connection between the eyes of the face and the sexual organs. The last line of the third quatrain confirms the logical connection, completing the necessary relationship between increase (store), truth and beauty, and the eyes.

Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck,
And yet me thinks I have Astronomy,
But not to tell of good, or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell;
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with Princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find.
But from thine eies my knowledge I derive,
And constant stars in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive
If from thy self, to store thou wouldst convert:
    Or else of thee this I prognosticate,
    Thy end is Truth’s and Beauty’s doom and date.
                                    (Sonnet 14)

        In sonnet 14 all the critical factors are given expression. The first eight lines list a number of sources from which the Poet does not derive truth and beauty. His capacity for judgment comes neither from the stars, as in astrology, nor from fortune telling. Astronomy enables him to see the stars but not predict good or evil luck nor flatter Princes with predictions from divine inspiration.
        The Poet bases his judgment on what he ‘knows’. His knowledge is logically derived from the nature/increase dynamic whose necessary organs of reception and transmission are the ‘eyes’. The two modes of knowledge, ideas and sensations or truth and beauty, form the dynamic that is the process of judgment.
        The Poet, as did Marcel Duchamp when questioned about alchemy, rejects pseudo-scientific speculation as to the source of truth and beauty. Once the increase sonnets identify the human body as prior to truth and beauty, the identification of the eyes as the source of knowledge or judgment in line 9 is consistent with the grounding of this possibility in the physiognomy of the face (eyes). Throughout the Sonnets, and in the poems and plays, persistent reference is made to the ‘eyes’. Their pervasive presence is a consequence of their role as the most effective organs from which to gauge the nature of transmitted ideas and feelings.
        As is consistent with the tenor of the whole set, sonnet 14 presents the philosophic conditions for the correct derivation of the dynamic of truth and beauty. The uncompromising identification of the source of truth and beauty in the physical ‘eyes’ of the human body implies an unequivocal rejection of the philosophical presumption of Platonic and Descartian idealism that the mind and body are logically distinct. This is particularly so when the double role of the eyes as organs of sight and sexual organs specifically unite the body and the mind. The human physiognomy is identified as the locus for a consistent philosophy. Because the eyes are the major organ of sense, and because they are intimately allied with the capacities of the human mind, they are recognised as critical features in characterising the logical status of the mind.
        In sonnet 14, the ‘eyes’ are called the ‘constant stars’. Their constancy derives from the logic of the Sonnets, which associates the eyes with the logical relation of the body and the mind. The word ‘star’ is used a further six times within the Sonnets. Each time the relationship between the heavenly stars and the eyes or the process of increase is commented on.

3.111     Sonnets 15, 25, 26 and 28, the starry eyes

In sonnet 15, in an immediate rejoinder to sonnet 14, the stars above shine in silent ‘comment’ on the short duration of a particular life. But, as the Poet notes, men increase as plants do and under the same sky. So the conceit of inconstancy is a boon because the youth can renew himself through increase. In conformity with 14, the Poet pricks the conceit generated through stargazing by pointing out that the natural dynamic of increase is driven by the same dynamic that drives the stars.

When I consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment.
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereas the Stars in secret influence comment.
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky:
Vaunt their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory.
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay,
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful time debateth with decay
To change your day of youth to sullied night,
    And all in war with Time for love of you
    As he takes from you, I engraft you new.
                                    (Sonnet 15)

        Sonnet 25 repeats the philosophic insight of 14. The various ‘stars’, catalogued in lines 1 to 12, are countered by the Poet’s reaffirmation of his understanding of ‘love’. This is the love based on the logic of increase expressed in sonnet 9.

Let those who are in favour with their stars,
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I whom fortune of such triumph bars
Unlooked for joy in that I honour most;
Great Princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread,
But as the Marigold at the sun’s eye,
And in them-selves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior famoused for worth,
After a thousand victories once foiled,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:
    Then happy I that love and am beloved
    Where I may not remove, nor be removed.
                                    (Sonnet 25)

        Sonnet 26 has already been commented on with regard to the confusion that occurs when the stars are not recognised as being the ‘constant stars’ or eyes from 14 (see 3.26).

But that I hope some good conceit of thine
In thy soul’s thought (all naked) will bestow it:
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
And puts apparel on my tottered loving,
To show me worthy of their sweet respect,
    Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee,
    Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.
                                    (Sonnet 26.7-14)

        In sonnet 28 the Poet attempts but fails to see the stars that are the youth’s eyes. He gazes into a darkness in which even stars will not shine.

So flatter I the swart complexioned night,
When sparkling stars twire not thou guil’st the even.
                                    (Sonnet 28.11-12)

3.112     Sonnet 116, the erotic star

The correlation of the eyes with the sexual organs has the star in sonnet 116 directly related to the youth’s penis. The eroticism of this sonnet has been noted. The connection between the love based in increase from sonnet 9 and the stars of the eyes as the source of truth and beauty is anchored around the ‘ever fixed mark’ of the ‘wandering bark’ and the ‘rosy lips and cheeks’ that come within the compass of the ‘bending sickle’.

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 wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Times 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.
                                    (Sonnet 116)

3.113     Sonnet 132, the morning eyes

Sonnet 132 is another of the sonnets in which emendation has occurred based on the misunderstanding of the relation of the stars and the eyes. The significance of the eyes, as the central image of the sonnet, is established in 132.1 and the first quatrain. The Mistress’ eyes have ‘put on black’ and become ‘mourners’. Neither the Sun of Heaven rising in the ‘grey cheeks’ of the East nor the Evening Star are as mournful. The eyes, or ‘morning’ suns in the ‘grey cheeks’, are then recalled in the ‘two morning eyes’ that in their ‘mourning’ have a suitable grace allowing the Poet to swear that the Mistress’ black beauty renders any other beauty ‘foul’.

Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,
Have put on black, and loving members be,
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain,
And truly not the morning Sun of Heaven
Better becomes the gray cheeks of the East,
Nor that full Star that ushers in the Eaven
Doth half that glory to the sober West
As those two morning eyes become thy face:
O let it then as well beseem thy heart
To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,
And suit thy pity like in every part.
    Then will I swear beauty her self is black,
    And all they foul that thy complexion lack.
                                    (Sonnet 132)

3.114     The logic of the stars

The stars in the sky, to which astrology addresses its expectations, are given a psychological function in the Sonnets rather than a logical one. As distant sources of light, they patently do not correspond to the embodied logic of the human condition. Because the universe of stars could persist without the presence of human beings, and because human beings are dependant upon the universe as it exists then any attempt to account for human life independent of the characteristics of human life must be foiled by an approach that ignores human characteristics. The contradiction is revealed in the inevitable anthropomorphisations that accompany pseudo-logical or psychological claims based on nonhuman entities such as God or the Big Bang.
        As an asexual form of life, stars do not procreate. They form and reform in a way consistent with atomic or subatomic entities. While the dynamic is invaluable to human beings, the persistence of human beings through generations is logically entailed in the sexual dynamic. While the system of stars continues to persist, their existence is not sufficient to ensure the survival of the human species. On the other hand stars will persist if human beings cease to increase.
        This is the logic behind the last line of the third quatrain of sonnet 14 and its consequences in the couplet. They present the categorical statement that if there is no increase then there will be no human minds to sustain the truth and beauty dynamic. It is the issue about which the youth should make a ‘judgment’. His ability to appreciate the truth and beauty dynamic (through the ‘eyes’) and the logical requirement to increase (through the ‘eyes’ of the sex organs) are intimately connected.
        The connection between the two forms of the eyes is explored throughout the sonnets. The various forms of interpersonal interplay are taken into account. This is encapsulated in the spelling of the eyes in sonnet 14 in Q. There they are represented as ‘eies’ in which the ‘i’ or I is positioned to form an image of the relation between two sets of eyes. This ellipsis is made clearer when it is compared to the form the idea takes in sonnet 104 as ‘eye I eyed’. Here the homophonic relation between eye and I is used to create an image of two identities, or of two personalities, eyeballing each other.

3.115     Sonnet 24 and others, from eye to mind and heart

The Poet and the youth are visually aware of each other. When the Poet is responding to the physical beauty of the youth and the youth is noticing the wrinkles of the aging Poet they are ‘seeing’ each other’s external appearances using their eyes. This process of seeing, though, accounts for only some instances in which the ‘eyes’ appear. The couplet of sonnet 24 indicates the crucial distinction.

    Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art
    They draw but what they see, know not the heart.
                                     (Sonnet 24.13-14)

        The process of seeing the external appearance is secondary to the process of looking into the youth’s eyes into the heart. This process is explored in the previous lines of sonnet 24.

Mine eye hath played the painter and hath steeld,
Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart,
My body is the frame wherein ’tis held,
And perspective it is best Painter’s art.
For through the Painter must you see his skill,
To find where your true Image pictur’d lies,
Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes:
Now see what good turns eyes for eies have done,
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
Are windows to my breast, where-through the Sun
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee.
                                    (Sonnet 24.1-12)

        The logical function of the visual process in the Sonnets occurs when the Poet, the Master Mistress or the Mistress look into each other’s eyes. The eyes provide the entry point to the mind, heart, and soul. The perturbations of the mind, heart and soul are evident in the eyes. This relation is expressed in a number of sonnets such as 31.

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
Which I by lacking have supposed dead,
And there reigns Love and all Love’s loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye,
As interest of the dead, which now appear,
But things removed that hidden in there lie.
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give,
That due of many, now is thine alone.
    Their images I loved, I view in thee,
    And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.
                                    (Sonnet 31)

        Or sonnets 46/47,

Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,
How to divide the conquest of thy sight,
Mine eye, my heart their pictures sight would bar,
My heart, mine eye the freedom of that right,
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,
(A closet never pierced with crystal eyes)
But the defendant doth that plea deny,
And says in him their fair appearance lies.
To side this title is impanelled
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,
And by their verdict is determined
The clear eyes moiety, and the dear heart’s part.
    As thus, mine eye’s due is their outward part,
    And my heart’s right, their inward love of heart.
                                    (Sonnet 46)

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,
And each doth good turns now unto the other,
When that mine eye is famished for a look,
Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother;
With my love’s picture then my eye doth feast,
And to the painted banquet bids my heart:
An other time mine eye is my heart’s guest,
And in his thoughts of love doth share a part.
So either by thy picture or my love,
Thy self away, are present still with me,
For thou nor farther than my thoughts canst move,
And I am still with them and they with thee.
    Or if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
    Awakes my heart, to heart’s and eyes’ delight.
                                    (Sonnet 47)

        Or sonnet 69,

Those parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view,
Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend:
All tongues (the voice of souls) give thee that end,
Uttering bare truth, even so as foes Commend.
Their outward thus with outward praise is crowned,
But those same tongues that give thee so thine own,
In other accents do this praise confound
By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.
They look into the beauty of thy mind,
And that in guess they measure by thy deeds,
Then churls their thoughts (although their eies were kind)
To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds,
    But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,
    The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.
                                    (Sonnet 69)

        Or sonnets 113/114,

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,
And that which governs me to go about,
Doth part his function, and is partly blind,
Seems seeing, but effectually is out:
For it no form delivers to the heart
Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth lack,
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:
For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,
The most sweet-savour or deform’st creature,
The mountain, or the sea, the day, or night:
The Crow, or Dove, it shapes them to your feature.
    Incapable of more repleat, with you,
    My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.
                                    (Sonnet 113)

Or whether doth my mind being crown’d with you
Drink up the monarch’s plague this flattery?
Or whether shall I say mine eie faith true,
And that your love-taught it this Alchemy?
To make of monsters, and things indigest,
Such cherubines as your sweet self resemble,
Creating every bad a perfect best
As fast as objects to his beams assemble:
Oh ’tis the first, ’tis flatry in my seeing,
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up,
Mine eye well knows what with his gust is greeing,
And to his pallet doth prepare the cup.
    If it be poisoned, ’tis the lesser sin,
    That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.
                                    (Sonnet 114)

        The eyes become the focal point beyond which truth (mind) and beauty (heart) function.

3.116     Sonnet 55 and others, the eye as sexual organ

The second relation inherent in the use of the image of the eye is also one that occurs throughout the works of Shakespeare. This is the relation of the organs of sight with the sexual organs of the male and the female. In sonnet 116 the face and the sexual organs are both evoked in the one image. In a number of instances but particularly in sonnet 153 the meaning makes it abundantly clear that the ‘Mistress’ eye’ is her sexual organ. Either blindly or willfully editors have emended the ‘eye’ of this sonnet to ‘eyes’. The double function of the letter I as a phallic rod or a genital slit further enriches the resonance of this interface of eyes.
        Another instance where the double meaning of the eyes is particularly evident is in sonnet 55. Sexual interconnection through time is captured in line 11, and the erection of the penis in line 13.

Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
    So til the judgment that your self arise,
    You live in this, and dwell in lover’s eies.
                                    (Sonnet 55.11-14)

        In sonnet 56 the sense of revived and satiated love and the evocation of Eros, the God of Love, is all too evident.

Sweet love renew thy force, be it not said
Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
Which but today by feeding is allayed,
Tomorrow sharpened in his former might.
So love be thou, although today thou fill
Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,
Tomorrow see again, and do not kill
The spirit of Love, with a perpetual dullness.
                                    (Sonnet 56.1-8)

        In the Alien Poet sonnets the Poet suggests inferior Poets create not life but a tomb, but that neither of them can capture the force of life evident in the increase process.

For I impair not beauty being mute,
When others would give life, and bring a tomb.
    There lives more life in one of your fair eyes,
    Than both your Poets can in praise devise.
                                    (Sonnet 83.11-14)

        Sonnet 121 brings together ‘pleasure’, ‘adulterate’ and ‘wills’ to characterise the eyes as sexual organs.

’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be, receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed,
Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing.
For why should others’ false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies;
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
                                    (Sonnet 121.1-8)

        The imagery continues in the Mistress sonnets where in sonnet 142, for instance, ‘sinful loving’ is related to eyes that ‘woo’.

Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving,
O but with mine, compare thou thine own state,
And thou shalt find it merits not reproving,
Or if it do, not from those lips of thine,
That have prophaned their scarlet ornaments,
And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine,
Robbed others’ beds revenues of their rents.
Be it lawful I love thee as thou lovest those,
Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee,
                                    (Sonnet 142.1-10)

3.117     Summary

The identity of the eyes of the face with the sexual organs serves to sustain the philosophic relationship that exists between the body and the mind. If human increase is a function of female and male genitalia and human judgment or knowledge is a function of the human eye then the choice of the image of the eyes as a critical and affective image serves the philosophic purpose in the Sonnets as visual transmitters of a poetics based on the dynamic of increase.
        The traditional ignorance as to the significance of sonnet 14, and the importance of the image of the eyes for the meaning of the whole set of Sonnets, has led editors since the Reverend Edmund Malone to emend words that have a valid meaning when viewed from the vantage of the logic of sonnet 14. The most significant interference in the meaning of the Sonnets occurs with the traditionally accepted emendations to 14 instances of the word ‘their’ which is altered to ‘thy’ by the academics. In 8 instances the ‘their’ refers to the sight of both eyes and not to the mere appearance of the youth (see Emendations, Volume 2).

3.118     Ideas and sensations

In the presentation of the Sonnet philosophy, the philosophic structures and themes in Q have predominated. Key terms such as sovereign mistress, Mistress, Master Mistress, Poet, Rose, Muse, and concepts such as increase, and truth and beauty, have been used throughout because they are the original words used in the Sonnets to name particular entities and conditions.
        To give a wider sense of their philosophic role in the dynamic of the Sonnets, equivalent terms such as female, male, the sexual process, erotics, sensation, ethics and the ideal have been substituted where necessary. Consideration will now be given to the relation of truth and beauty to their more conventional equivalents, ideas and sensations or ethics and aesthetics.
        In traditional philosophy it is commonly accepted that there are two modes of perception or understanding. They have been called sensations and ideas, intuition and cognition, and other such terms. However they are named, the logical division into two modes of perception distinguishes between the effect of sensory input on the mind and the articulation of ideas in the mind. Logically, sensations are perceptions unmediated by thought, while ideas are perceptions related through thought and language.
        It should be apparent by now that Shakespeare, when he uses the terms truth and beauty, makes the same logical distinction that exists between ideas and sensations. The clear differentiation between beauty as ‘seeing’ and truth as ‘saying’ in the Mistress sequence (sonnet 137), and the identification of the Muse and the Rose with language and sensation respectively, suggest he was aware of the traditional distinction.
        For Shakespeare, the nature of truth is not determined by defining truth in terms of a necessary good. Similarly the nature of beauty is not defined by identifying a superior form of beauty. Shakespeare does not attempt to give meaning to the terms truth and beauty. All the necessary meaning for the truth and beauty sonnets is implicit in the logical priority of the nature/ increase dynamic. All that is required for an understanding of their meaning is the identification of their role in the Sonnets. If they are identified consistent with the logic of the prior elements then their meaningfulness is guaranteed.
        Shakespeare uses the terms truth and beauty with precision to convey the logical dynamic of ideas and sensations, of saying and seeing out of the Sonnet logic. In so doing he critiques the tendency in apologetic philosophy to define truth in terms of beauty and beauty in terms of truth.
        Ideas and sensations, and truth and beauty are both characterised by the singular effect of sensation (beauty) in the mind and the polarity of ideas (truth) in the mind. Whereas sensations are not articulated in thought, ideas are not ideas without being articulated in thought or language. The unitary nature of sensations and the polarity associated with ideas are logical features of the conscious mind.
        The logical structuring of the Sonnets articulates the relation between the dynamic of nature and increase, and the dynamic of the mind in terms of truth and beauty. The logical power of the Sonnets derives from the recognition that the logic of nature and the persistence of the human being in nature generate the necessary logic for the functioning of the mind.

3.119     Ethics and aesthetics

The words ethics and aesthetics are not mentioned in the Sonnets. Likewise the word sensation does not occur, though the word idea does occur once. Instead truth and beauty are used to cover all possibilities of understanding. Because Shakespeare derives the dynamic of truth and beauty from the logical basis for understanding in the nature/increase dynamic, he uses the words truth and beauty with logical precision.
        The truth and beauty dynamic is the basis for a logically consistent understanding of the dynamic of ethics and aesthetics. When the logical relation of body and mind is taken into consideration, the interplay of ideas as truth is synonymous with ethics and the impact of sensations as beauty is synonymous with aesthetics.
        Beauty is used as a generic term for all sensory processes. It is archetypically identified with ‘seeing’, and is associated with the aesthetic effect in painting, poetry, music, and art in general. Truth is used as a generic term for all language processes. It is archetypically identified with ‘saying’, and is associated with will, judgment, vows, and knowledge, to name a few of the hundreds of specifically appreciative and evaluative words used in the Sonnets.
        By associating the idea of beauty with the basic sensory processes and the ‘Arts’, Shakespeare draws attention to the logically shared feature of both in their singularity of effect. In terms of perception or seeing, any form of sensation, even the most sophisticated, functions in the same singular way.
        The dynamic of truth associates both ‘saying’ (or the expression of ideas) and ethical issues with the implication that any form of thought or language is inherently evaluative. The dynamic of truth (the ‘endless jar’ between ‘right and wrong’), or the process of evaluating the true and the false, provides the logical form for the processes of thought and expression. Any thought or expression, whether a statement of fact or a moral imperative, conforms to the logic of the truth dynamic.
        Shakespeare appreciates that truth and beauty operate together in a continuous interplay capable of generating any form of conscious activity. Science and the arts, morals and poetry, are logical consequences of the dynamic, which has its basis in the given of the first 14 sonnets and the structure of the whole set.
        Shakespeare’s deliberately uses the word beauty to recover its ancient relationship to sensations and aesthetics. Consistent with the definition derived from the Greek, aesthetics is the realm of perceptions or sensations unmediated by thought. To talk of aesthetics and to talk of sensations is to refer to the same basic phenomena. Any sensation, whether sublime or trivial, is an aesthetic effect. Aesthetic effects are sensations or intuitions of what is ‘best’ or what is ‘worst’ (sonnet 137). Confusion and inconsistency ensue if the aesthetic is given a rational function. When Kant talks of ‘aesthetic judgment’ or the early Wittgenstein equates ‘ethics and aesthetics’ an elementary contradiction is perpetrated.
        The 18th century selective employment of the word aesthetic as a term for the ‘beautiful’, ‘taste’, or the ‘science of aesthetics’, is typical of the distortion of the original philosophic clarity of the understanding out of the Greek. Under the influence of apologetic rationalisation, the aesthetic came to stand for idealistic aspects of the beautiful in art. This distortion is not a particularly modern invention as even Shakespeare, in his day, was acutely aware of its illogicality.
        The dynamic of human persistence is the overriding determinant of sensibility that inherently provides the criteria within which the possibility of value or moral sense in relation to sensation is established. Any attempt to determine a relation between the aesthetic and the ethical without acknowledging its influence distorts the relation.
        Shakespeare deliberately uses the word truth to refer to the dynamic of ideas or ethics. Ethics is the conscious interplay of ideas in the process of determining and pursuing an appropriate course of action. It is the rational processing of ideas, the determinations of the will or conscience (sonnet 151), the determination of right and wrong, of true and false, whether in everyday activity or in the investigations of science or in the speculations of metaphysics.
        Shakespeare is equally determined to identify what is logically common to all processes of conscious evaluation through language. Ideas and sensations are each a distinct mode of perception. The preconditions for truth and beauty in the Sonnet logic determine the relationship of the modes of perception. Because purpose is inherent in the dynamic of life, and because sensation gives only an intuition of value, the relation of ideas is the logical arena for the determination of value, or the conscious judgment between competing possibilities. In the encompassing logic of life any association of ideas is ethical.
        The same tendency to distort the logic of understanding occurs with ethics. Typically the facts and laws of science are regarded as non-ethical or amoral. To decide that some relations of ideas are amoral or unconstrained by ethical consequences is an illogical presumption. It is contrary to the dynamic of life that establishes the logical relation between ethics and aesthetics.
        A further consequence of the Sonnet logic is that the phrase ‘science of ethics’ is effectively a tautology if a method for determining true and false investigates the logic of true and false. Effectively the phrase says ‘ethics of ethics’. Similarly the phrase ‘science of aesthetics’, when aesthetics is given its logical meaning as sensations unmediated by thought, is a contradiction. Effectively the phrase says ‘ethics of aesthetics’, but logically ethics derives from aesthetics.
        Traditionally the words ethics and aesthetics have been used to express moral or artistic value. By comparison, the words ideas and sensations have been denied evaluative associations. The prejudice is a direct consequence of prioritising the mind over the body in apologetics.
        A related difficulty is experienced with the notion of the ideal. The ideal is the sensation of a singular idea in the mind or the unmediated idea of a pervasive sensation. It is the sensation of a single idea in the mind that has been isolated from the ethical process. For this reason it is as difficult to sustain the idea of the absolute before our minds (the perfect Rose, God) as it is consciously to reinvoke the sensation of a pain. The ideal readily collapses into its component ideas (the canker or thorn) just as absolute goodness conceals the relation of good and evil or right and wrong.
        When Kant reintroduces the notions of God and immortality into his consideration of practical reason he does so because he ignored the logical influence of the Body template on the mind in his analysis of ‘pure’ reason. The illogical consequences are inevitable because his apologist agenda takes no account of the logic of the sexual dynamic out of nature.
        The ideal, contradiction, and tautology, are logical indicators of the transition point between ideas and sensations. They say something about the logic of language in the same way that suggesting a male reproduce from a male, or a female fertilise her own egg says something of the logic of the sexual dynamic. They are the limiting conditions of the mind and so exist as possibilities but are not determining criteria for the persistence of human life.
        Although there is a continual interaction between ideas and sensation, between the ethical dynamic and the aesthetic dynamic, the rational or ethical dynamic is quite distinct from the sensory or aesthetic dynamic. Not only are they functionally distinct they are also inherently or logically distinct. Ethics and aesthetics, then, are in a continual dynamic that is based in their logical relationship to the sexual dynamic in nature.
        Every sonnet in the set of Sonnets is characterised by the continuous dynamic of truth and beauty. Truth and beauty are paired 12 times in the sequence and each word occurs separately about 50 times. Every sonnet has one or two words or more that speak directly to the truth and beauty dynamic. They are too numerous to list but typical examples from sonnets 20 to 49 are: trust, honour, pride, duty, respect, oppression, torture, woe, expense, stolen, disgrace, ugly, repent, faulty, sins, confess, guilt, worth, praise, blame, thief, steal, wrongs, approve, defendant, falsehood, defects, lawful. It is as if Shakespeare shook out a whole dictionary to cover every conceivable form of ‘truth’ and to evoke the corresponding sensation or sense of ‘beauty’.
        Because the dynamic of truth and beauty is an inalienable process, the Sonnets present the understanding of their dynamic as a brilliantly intertwined combination of lyrical and argumentative verse. Certain sonnets rise to lyrical heights evoking intense emotions, while others are resolutely argumentative demanding a focus of the intellect. The result is a doubly rewarding effect as the intellect appreciates the sublime intimations of the ideas and the sentimental faculty seeks reasons for the heightening and the inevitable diminution of the emotions.

3.120     The Truth and beauty template

In the Mistress sequence the relationship between truth and beauty is clearly articulated. Beauty as the representative of sensations is prior to truth as the representative of ideas. So a basic template can be constructed of the derivation of ideas from sensations (Diag 33).

        Sensations are always singular and ideas are at least bipolar. The process of naming, within the context of a language, differentiates an object or other state of affairs from its setting and from other objects.
        In the terminology of the Sonnets, beauty represents any sensation regardless of its intensity or attributed significance. Truth is identified with the process of saying or the dynamic of language in which things in the world available through sensation are given a value by the mere act of naming (Diag 34). In the Sonnets, the sensation of what is best or worst (seeing) is translated into the determination of what is true or false (saying) as in sonnet 137.
        In the youth sequence specific attention is given to the generation of sensations peculiar to the mind from ideas within in the mind. These are sensations associated with words that are divorced from their usual function in language and arise when the polarity associated with ideas is contradicted or denied.

        Or in Sonnet terms (Diag 36),

        To represent the continuous interplay in the mind between ideas and sensations, where sensations give rise to ideas and ideas give rise to sensations both templates can be combined into a template for the logical operation of the mind (Diag 37).

        Or in more general terms (Diag 38),

        The template accounts for the relationship of ideas to sensations and for the experience of sensations not otherwise attributable to the sensate world. Because the structuring of the template is consistent with the logical priority of the body over the mind, it also accounts for the sense of innate structuring in the mind. When the complete set of templates is brought together the interconnection will become evident.

3.121     The Nature templates

The Sonnets have been organised in such a way that a sequence of four moves establishes the logical relation between nature, increase, beauty and truth, and truth and beauty. These are the basic elements for a consistent philosophy as they form the logical basis for human existence. They provide the logical basis for every possibility. In Part 1 the primary template representing the relation of nature and the sexual was derived. In Part 2 the Increase template was derived. And in Part 3 the Beauty and truth template and the Truth and beauty template have been derived.
        The logical relationship between nature and the sexual dynamic, and increase in the Sonnets locates the preconditions for the functioning of the mind. Not only is increase logically prior to truth and beauty, truth and beauty derives its dynamic logically from the increase dynamic. If, as cognitive scientists such as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson and neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio have argued, the influence of bodily processes and dispositions on the operation of the mind is undeniable, then increase has an undeniable influence on the processes of understanding and expression.
        When the nature/sexual dynamic, and the increase dynamic, are mapped to the two parts of the truth and beauty dynamic the template formed should account for the dynamic of the human mind in nature. This is the expectation that Wittgenstein hoped to fulfill but failed to do in the Tractatus. His desire for a system of understanding with the correct logical multiplicity between the world and language is fulfilled by Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
        In the Body template, nature divides to form the female and the male, then in the Increase template, the female and male combine to form a child. In the Mind template, beauty divides to form the two poles of thought and expression, the true and the false, and then truth unifies to become an expression of sensation. This means the Mind template has the same form as the Body template (Diag 39).

        In the terminology of the Sonnets (Diag 40),

        The isomorphism in the Nature template between the templates for the body and the mind is consistent with the logical priority of the body over the mind. Being prior to the mind, the processes of bodily activity determine the logical processes of the mind. The Nature template captures the consequence that the dynamic of truth and beauty is modeled on the logical conditions of existence for any human being, their existence in nature and the requirement to increase. Truth and beauty are the two inalienable elements for a consistent philosophy.
        The balance between the two sides of the equation implies any philosophical understanding that does not base its claims on the structure of the increase dynamic will be inconsistent. By writing his philosophy in the form of sonnets Shakespeare demonstrates the need to account fully for the dispositions associated with beauty (intuition, poetics, sensory effects, art, etc.), and those associated with truth (science, thought, language, ethics, etc.), and to appreciate their logical interconnectedness. The templates of the body give the logical model for their interconnectedness.
        Shakespeare’s recognition of the relation between the processes of life and the activities of the mind is not new. In Genesis, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil represent the relationship between the body and the mind. Belief in the mythology of the Bible, however, with it’s the prioritisation of the male (God) over the female, leads to inconsistency in the symbolic use of the Trees.
        The isomorphism of the Nature template explains why it has been possible for traditional philosophical thought or apologetics to believe that the equation operates from right to left. Their strongly held presumption that mind is prior to body, or that the mind can dispense with the body, arises from the conformity of the Mind template with the Body template. The isomorphism creates the illusion that the Mind template is sufficient in itself. To compensate for the denial of the priority of the body such systems anthropomorphise and distort aspects of the truth and beauty dynamic. The inconsistencies in such understandings are evidence of their prejudice toward the body. (See 4.28 for models of inconsistency.)
        It should be evident that the understanding of truth and beauty presented in the Nature template is contrary to idealist and romantic notions of ethics and aesthetics. It should not surprise, then, that the Sonnets have remained opaque or mysterious to generations of intellects that have been fed on the staple diet of idealism and romanticism or their natural counterpart, scepticism. Shakespeare’s Sonnets, poems, and plays, demonstrate that inspiration and hope benefit from an appreciation of the correct alignment of these templates. The correct orientation has been confirmed both by the empirical evidence of Darwin and others and by the inconsistencies and contradictions that arise when the reversed model is applied in practice.

3.122     The correct multiplicity

When Wittgenstein wrote the Tractatus, he expected that an analysis of language into component parts of atomic and molecular propositions would account for the logical multiplicity he thought existed between language and the world. His expectation was driven by the common perception of the time that the essential building blocks of the world were atoms and molecules.
        When it was demonstrated that his system failed to have the required multiplicity he attempted to improve the philosophy of the Tractatus. His failure to do so led him give up hope of demonstrating a necessary structural relationship between language and the world. The irony is that, in his later work, he began to use organic metaphors, and even anthropomorphic metaphors such as family resemblances, that could have led him to achieve his early ambition if he had not been so resolutely opposed to the role of evolution in the development of the mind.
        In 1609 Shakespeare had anticipated and overcome Wittgenstein’s difficulties. In a supreme feat of common sense he identified the logical condition for the presence in the world of every human being alive at any given moment and for the persistence of the human species into the following generations. The dynamic of increase provided the logical conditions for the operation of the human mind in nature. After structuring the whole set of Sonnets and its two sequences to represent nature and the sexual dynamic, he established the logical conditions for human persistence in the first 14 sonnets. He then wrote the remaining sonnets using the inherent structure as a given for the dynamic of truth and beauty. In this way he was able to remain coherent and consistent throughout without requiring further categorisation of ideas.
        In 400 years of dissatisfaction with the seemingly chaotic arrangement of the Sonnets no scholar has come up with a better ordering. In every instance, where editors or commentators have suggested a different ordering, the attempts have involved the creation of categories oblivious to the logical priorities in the Sonnets. They have dismissed the increase sonnets and elevated subsidiary themes from the Sonnets as major ordering principles. Similarly, in 400 years, no one has written plays with the underlying consistency and coherence Shakespeare generates because no one has understood their philosophic basis in the Sonnets.
        Shakespeare’s philosophic understanding is structured into the Sonnets in such a way that the template for the fundamental distinction between nature and the sexual dynamic has the logical multiplicity to map the connection to increase and truth and beauty. This is given precise expression in the couplet of sonnet 68 where truth (the relation of true and false) and beauty are mapped from the potential of the youth’s store (or capacity for increase) provided by Nature.

    And him as for a map doth Nature store,
    To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
                                    (Sonnet 68.13-14)

The template for the relation between Nature and sexual differentiation is built into the overall structuring. The other templates, mapped from the Nature template, are derivable from the increase argument and the truth and beauty dynamic whose basic constituents are readily available in the Sonnets.
        The overall structure, based on the sexual division in nature, does not require empirical evidence for the possibility of the derivation of sexual species from nature. It simply presents the fact that nature exists and sexual species exist and that as a sexual species human beings are in a necessary relationship with nature. Nature is prior to the derivation of sexual species because, if all sexual species on earth ceased to exist, nature would persist. In this way the incredible complexity and intricacy of sexual evolution over time as evident in contemporary species, is seen as the background for the multiplicity of functions and dispositions currently part of the human species.
        Then the Increase template gives expression to the logical condition that everyone alive was born and for the species to persist there cannot be a situation in the future in which nobody is born. Again logical rather than empirical conditions are addressed for the persistence of any particular human because it is in the logical conditions that the multiplicity of possibilities resides. The incredible diversity of sexual species and the incredible diversity of eventualities and propensities for the human species depend on the will to persist from generation to generation.
        Because increase is the logical gateway to the following generation, it has the greatest effect on the logics of the mind. Attempts to establish systems of formal logic such as mathematics or other categories of thought other than the sexual as the basis for human understanding must necessarily lead to inconsistencies and contradictions. Only increase has the correct logical multiplicity to characterise human understanding. It identifies the characteristics of understanding relevant to a consistent logic and isolates those characteristics that are secondary features of the understanding.
        The way to the following generation depends on the coming together of the female and male reproductive systems to produce offspring. It follows logically that the Nature/Increase templates can represent the process of understanding. The truth and beauty dynamic logically encapsulates all the possibilities for understanding and expression because without the Increase template there would be no understanding or expression.
        By deriving the two modes of understanding, truth and beauty, from the dynamic of increase in nature, both the literal and metaphorical dispositions of the mind are recognised as necessary for a complete logic. A philosophy based on metaphor alone or one based on science alone would represent only one side of the logical relationship and would be in contradiction when applied generally. Because the truth and beauty dynamic completely characterises the logical operations of the mind, no further conditions for meaningfulness are required. Shakespeare demonstrates that a consistent application of the basic templates ensures complete sense. The difficulty experienced with his work by those with inconsistent philosophies, such as the Platonic and Christian, is evident when they alter and denigrate his work, even while they remain fascinated by it. (See the essay on Stephen Booth and Helen Vendler in Volume 4.)
        The correct logical multiplicity identifies the aspect of human existence that creates the dynamic of truth and beauty. The derivation of the dynamic from the increase argument is consistent with the logical relationship between the mind and the body for human cognition and expression. The increase dynamic is further located in its logical relation to nature. In this way the logical relation between the human mind and the rest of nature is established. Nature in the Sonnets contextualises and incorporates human nature and in this way the mind is necessarily part of nature, or a product of nature, but only on the condition it fulfils its potential for increase.
        The basic form of the template, used to represent the three stages of development, represents natural diversity. Each occurrence of the template stands for an immensely intricate branching series of past, present, and future developments and extinctions. The Nature/sexual template accounts for all the asexual aspects of the universe in relation to the development of sexual species. The Increase template isolates the aspect of the Nature template relevant to human beings in all their variety of types and dispositions. The Truth and beauty template recognises the necessary complexity of the mind as a natural development from the previous possibilities.
        The multiplicity of the functions of the human mind are recognised as natural correlates of the multiplicity evident in the physical world. In this way Shakespeare gives his understanding of truth and beauty the correct logical multiplicity to relate the capacities of the human mind meaningfully to the world about. He is able to present the sonnets after sonnet 20 as if naturally disposed because he acknowledges the inherent structure of the world. The mistake made by Wittgenstein in his early philosophy is the direct result of choosing a model for understanding not characterised in any way by the idiosyncrasies of the human condition.

3.123     Conclusion

So far in the process of examining the principal elements in the Sonnets, account has been taken of the logical structure of the whole set and its two sequences, the logic of increase, and the consequent effect on the mind of the human being in terms of truth and beauty. Truth and beauty receives the most attention in the Sonnets, and here, because it is the dynamic in human life that is most subject to illogical expectations as a consequence of the misrepresentation of its operations in apologetics.
        In the Sonnets, the Poet represents himself as a person who has achieved mastery of and maturity over the possibilities of the truth and beauty dynamic. He not only claims to have understood the correct logical operation of the mind, he sets out the necessary conditions for the successful expression of that understanding in his mythic poems and plays, and by implication for any form of expression.
        Part 4 will consider the elements in the Sonnets that enable the Poet to present the logical conditions for any mythic expression.