If you want sensible views on the proper and improper use of money, Shakespeare’s your man, as he is on almost everything else in human life. You can look at the enterprising Merchant of Venice, Antonio, who has ships laden with valuable goods sailing to and from Mexico, England, the Indies, and the shores of Tripoli. Yet if anything, all that worldly concern, though it’s productive and without blame, makes him a somewhat sad fellow; he’s happiest when he’s giving money away. Or you can look at King Richard II, whose overspending and irresponsibility loses him the affection of his people: “The commons hath he pilled with grievous taxes / And quite lost their hearts.” Even those who are generous with their goods can be utterly unwise about it, as Timon of Athens learned to his misery, when the ingratitude of his false friends causes him to hate almost all mankind; so that when the senate of Athens greets him, he replies, “I thank them, and would send them back the plague / Could I but catch it for them.” No, Shakespeare was never a sentimentalist about either money or the lack of it. I don’t think he could be, or how else could he have stayed in business for so long, as playwright, director, actor, and manager of his troupe?
Yet he also knew that even in this life there are riches greater than money, and one of those, the theme for our Poem of the Week, is friendship. I’m looking at one of the finest of his sonnets, number 29 — though I think that people who love Shakespeare’s sonnets know them by their first lines, such as “Let me not to the marriage of true minds", or “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” or, “Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore.” This one, then, is “When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes.”
Let me say something straight off, lest we get embroiled in biographical matters that I think are not relevant to the poem. When people in Shakespeare’s day wrote sonnet sequences, they did so as complete works, not as collections of poems more or less related to one another. They were also, and pointedly, not identifying themselves simply or completely with the speaker of the poems; sometimes, in fact, not at all. Well, we don’t have the space here to get into an interpretation of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets as a single coherent work. But I will call the first person narrator “the speaker,” and leave it at that.
In any case, the speaker is a man much put upon. He says he has all the reasons in the world to envy others, because he is “in disgrace with Fortune,” so that money matters are pinching him, and also in disgrace “with men’s eyes,” so that people look askance at him — whether with good reason or not, we cannot tell. He is alone, outcast, crying out to heaven, but heaven, he says, does not answer his prayers; and again, since Shakespeare is pushing the self-pity a bit, he causes us to suspend our trust. We can grant that the speaker is unhappy, and if you spend your days comparing yourself with other people, that is no good strategy for happiness. He wishes he had that man’s friends high up at court, or that other man’s good looks, or still another man’s breadth of mind, and indeed he says he is near to despising himself. Please recall the precise meaning of the verb to despise: it doesn’t mean to hate, but to look down upon, with contempt. There’s nothing in his life that gives him delight, not even the things he enjoys. And then — he thinks on his beloved friend.
The last five lines of the sonnet, after the “turn” in line nine, signaled by the conjunction “yet,” soar as high as the lark they describe. What are wealth, influential friends, the good opinion of others, a handsome face, or all these things together, in comparison with love, with the love the speaker celebrates? Oh, in other sonnets he will say, sullenly, that the object of this affection does not care for him. But here, it is all confidence and praise. Such love makes the speaker say that he would not trade his place with kings.
Above: Dame Judi Dench, on the Graham Norton show, recites Sonnet 29 ex tempore
When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast 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 myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at 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.
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