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Article Excerpt
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNET 23, which I quote from the edition by G. Blakemore Evans, (1) constitutes an eloquent comment on Shakespearean authorship but also on the traditional resistance to the view of Shakespeare as a self-conscious, literary author:
As an unperfect actor on the stage, Who with his fear is put beside 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'ercharged with burthen of mine own love's might: O let my looks 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 as quoted above appears not only in Evans's 1996 edition, but also in Helen Vendler's The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1997), as well as in many other editions. (2) Their text departs in an important way from the quarto of 1609 in which the poem was first published. In line 9, where Evans, Vendler, and others have "looks," the 1609 quarto has "books." The emendation from "books" to "looks" has a long history, going back all the way to George Sewell who edited the unauthorized seventh volume that was added to Pope's Shakespeare edition of 1725. Sewell has found countless followers in the course of the last three centuries. By the early twentieth century, "looks," as one editor had it, was "an almost certain emendation," and another editor, twenty years later, thought that "looks" was "entirely necessary." (3) Reassuringly, others have disagreed, pointing out that "Books alone agrees with line 13," "O! learn to read what silent love hath writ." (4) As Stephen Booth writes, "books is the Q reading and makes sense," so there is no need to emend it. (5) Some have argued that books can hardly be "presagers of [someone's] speaking breast," but Colin Burrow rightly points out that "The word is a new one in the 1590s, and Shakespeare seems to be using it as a near synonym for 'ambassador,' rather than exploiting its associations with understanding of the future." (6)
In fact, the sonnet carefully constructs an opposition between the oral and the literate: the "actor on the stage" (1), the "ceremony of love's rite" (6), "eloquence" (9), "dumb" (10), "speaking" (10), and "tongue" (12) all contribute to the notion of orality to which the sonnet opposes that of literacy: "books" (9), "read" (13), "writ" (13), and "hear with eyes" (14). Yet even when editors realize how important the word "book" is in establishing one of the sonnet's central oppositions and thus do not emend "books" to "looks," their annotation at times seems tendentious. "Books" refers exclusively to Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, the argument goes. Since both narrative poems are dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, the so-called Southamptonites--who argue that the famous "Mr. W. H." in the prefatory material to the sonnets corresponds to the Earl of Southampton--have been particularly keen to argue this case. Others have maintained that "books," which could refer to any kind of text on paper, even to a single handwritten sheet, in fact refers to the sonnets themselves. (7)
Considering the theatrical context of the sonnet's opening lines, however, it seems significant that editors have generally failed to investigate a rather more plausible reading, namely, that "books" refers to printed Shakespearean playbooks. Stephen Booth is the only exception of which I am aware, pointing out that "Shakespeare may intend a play on 'book' meaning the written text of a stage play." (8) Indeed, just as the speaker, incapable of adequately expressing his love in speech, asks the addressee to witness his written profession of love, so the speaker, an...
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