SONNET 9 SHAME - Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye

Cain - Henri Vidal - source

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye,
That thou consum'st thy self in single life?
Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;
The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep
By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind:
Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unused the user so destroys it.
   No love toward others in that bosom sits
   That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.


SONNET INDEX

Allegories of Shame - The Five-Headed Monster
source

Mnemonic Image 

SHAME

But how to imagine Shame? What is the image here? Perhaps everyone has their own private scene. But it's a difficult concept to figure, especially in relation to Sonnet 9.

The description for the contemporary philosopher Martha Nussbaum's book, Hiding from Humanity Disgust, Shame, and the Law [google books link], offers insight:

Martha Nussbaum argues that we should be wary of these emotions [shame and disgust] because they are associated in troubling ways with a desire to hide from our humanity, embodying an unrealistic and sometimes pathological wish to be invulnerable. Nussbaum argues that the thought-content of disgust embodies "magical ideas of contamination, and impossible aspirations to purity that are just not in line with human life as we know it." She argues that disgust should never be the basis for criminalizing an act, or play either the aggravating or the mitigating role in criminal law it currently does. She writes that we should be similarly suspicious of what she calls "primitive shame," a shame "at the very fact of human imperfection," and she is harshly critical of the role that such shame plays in certain punishments.

And this is from the book itself:

Where in this history should we locate shame? I can approach this topic by introducing yet one more classical myth, the story of the origins of love as told by Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, which builds on the Classic Golden age story. Human being were once whole and round, says Aristophanes. Our spherical shape was the outward image of our totality and power. We were "awe-inspiring in force and strength," and had "great ambitions." Humans, in consequence, assailed the gods, with the aim of establishing their control over the universe as a whole. Instead of wiping us out completely, Zeus simply, making us "weaker," made us humans - creating for us the conditions of need, insecurity and incompleteness that sets an unbridgeable gulf between us and the gods. He accomplished the change by cutting the spherical beings in two, so that they walked on two legs - and then he turned their faces around so they would always have to look at the cut part of themselves. Incompleteness is revealed to us then by the very form of our bodies, with their pointy jutting limbs, their oddly naked front parts, their genitalia that betray our need for one another. The navel represents the gods sewing together what they have cut, and is thus a memorial of our former suffering (mnemeion tou palaiou pathous). The people of the myth are ashamed of the way they are now. (Indeed, the Greek word for genitalia, aidoia, contains an allusion to shame, aidos.) Aristophanes small detail about the navel suggests that the myth is not about sexuality per se, but is intended to capture the traumatic character of birth into a world of objects: for of course what the navel really reminds us of is out separation from the sources of nutrition and comfort and the beginning of a needy life.  

Thus, Artistophanes portrays shame as a painful emotion grounded in the recognition of our own non-omnipotence and lack of control, and he suggests the memory or vestigial sense of an original omnipotence and completeness underlie the painful emotion as it manifests itself in life. We sense we ought to be whole, and maybe once were whole - and we know that we now are not. We sense that we ought to be round, and we see that we are jagged and pointy, and soft and wrinkled. The way in which the speech connects sex and shame seems deeply perceptive: primitive shame is not about sex per se, but about sexual need as one sign of a more general neediness and vulnerability. It seems plausible that Aristophanes is right: a kind of primitive shame at the very fact of being human and nonwhole underlies the more specific types of shame that we later feel about handicaps and inadequacies. 

She quotes Andrew Morrison in a passage which has particular relevance to the sonnets:

"The essential narcissistic concern is a yearning for absolute uniqueness and sole importance to someone else, a "significant other." This yearning ... is signaled in patients by such statements as, "If I am not the only person important to [therapist or another], I feel like l am nothing." Such a feeling reverberates with primitive fantasies of symbiotic merger, omnipotence, and grandiosity, what Freud referred to as primary narcissism. Its emphasis is on the state and status of the self, and yet, paradoxically, it implies as well the prescience of an object for whom the self is uniquely special or who offers no competition or barriers to the self in meeting needs for sustenance.... Inevitably, shame follows narcissistic defeat. Patients have described the torment they have suffered from a perceived lack of specialness. "This humiliation is the most painful feeling I have ever experienced." ... [S]uch a yearning for uniqueness - by its very nature - can never be satisfied fully or for long."

Here you can imagine the primary narcissism of the Young Man coupled with a "yearning for absolute uniqueness and sole importance" to the Poet. There is also a persuasive argument for the reversal of these roles. However, Shakespeare, as the philosophically ironic voice behind the Poet, manifests a steady intentionality to this dialectic. He is the therapist here, eliciting response, goading and leading the Young Man out of crisis.

The Young Man, in denial and active negation of his Beauty, is turning his back on the path, the Great Chain of Being, that leads to union with the Neoplatonic One, Godhead. There is a sacred duty that he owes to the Beauty manifested within him, to the Quintessence of Divinity contained within him. He must return this quintessence to the Godhead. Instead, he distracts himself in superficial dramas and a life of petty intrigues, amusing himself in the ephemeral world of fleeting sensation and pleasure. Here is the root of the murderous shame. He, like Cain, has turned his back on God, on the possibility of returning to the source of his nourishment and security. And while he may not understand this yet, if he does not lose his mind (Dorian Grey), he will one day know that he betrayed himself and, in doing so, was a traitor to God. By turning away from God, from union, unison, wholeness, he turned back towards a life of Shame.

Leave the Shame Behind - Chris Peters - source

Memory Passage 

Beauty's ROSE solitary in a muddy World War I TRENCH. Reflecting in a GLASS (mirror) the face of the EXECUTOR, Death, who admires the FRAME of bone, adjusts it with his HAND to catch the SUN. Suddenly, the world is full of MUSIC (infinite octave) that fills Death with SHAME


Couplet Imagery

    No love toward others in that bosom sits
   That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.

It is clear from the Young Man's actions, his responses to music, that he does not love any other, nor it seems does he even love himself. Perhaps due to his dissolute lifestyle, he is blinded to his own beauty, especially after shameful acts, where he perhaps sees himself as a monster. The Poet says, this is a shame where you are effectively murdering all your children before they are born, allowing them to languish as unplanted seeds upon your bedsheets. But more so, this is a shame where you are neglecting the responsibilities of your Beauty, not only to your future family, but to the Neoplatonic One, the Godhead, that from which your Beauty derives and is nourished by - not matter how much you deny it.

Is this Shame? - Michelangelo

Introductory

Helen Vendler calls this sonnet a "Fantasy on the Letter W", staking a portion of her claim on the quarto spelling of widdow. So in the spirit of her masterful close readings, I propose the sonnet be read in the voice of Elmer Fudd or the comedic caricature of Barbara Walters, Baba Wawa. I prefer Elmer as such,

Is iwt fow fwear to wet a widow's weye,
That wou conwum'st wy swelf in swingle wife?
Ah! if wou issuewess shawlt hap to dwie,
The world will wail whee wike a makewess wife;
The world will be why widow and still weep
That wou no fowrm of wee hast weft behind,
When ewery prwivate widow well may kweep
By chiwdren's eywes, hewr husband's swhape in mwind:
Wook what an untwhriwft in the world dwoth spwend
Shwifts but hwis pwace, fow stwill the world enjwoys iwt;
Bwut bweauty's waste hath in the worwd an ewnd,
And kwept unwused the uwser swo destwroys iwt.
   No wove toward owthers in thwat bwosom swits
   Thwat on himswelf swuch murdw'rous shwame commits.

Agreed it is extreme. And funny. But it does serve to bring into a higher sonic relief all of the w, u, v, l, ou, eau sounds. A vibrato wuh wuh wuh reverbs in the interior music of the poem. Reread the un-Elmered poem now, listen to those latent Ws sing. (Even better in the Quarto spelling.) But to what end? Perhaps as Paterson (who believes the sonnet to be rubbish) coyly(?) alludes, it was only to leave a lot of Ws in the poem. Get it? W.S. Pissing all over the poem for no good reason perhaps other than to mark his territory. Vendler sees it as a contrast between the sins of commission in the octave and sins of commission in the sestet. I get that. There is certainly a strong turn between the two, moving from the issueless Young Man, the widow and her children to the unthrift spending money.

For the purposes of memorization, however, in the context of the entire sequence, and my own self taking no small delight in The Story, made-up as much of it may be, but no less far-fetched than many many others, I believe this sonnet and the following are the first signs of Shakespeare seeing more in the Young Man than a simple commission, a handful of coin for a handful of sonnets. Call it infatuation, call it falling in love. But after reciting this sonnet by memory hundreds of times, hearing all the echoes of the sonnets that precede it, it is unsettling to get to the couplet with its "murderous shame". That's intense. You imagine the Young Man's mother catching him in the act of masturbation, his heir worthy ejaculate splattered over his bare chest, hysterically shrieking: How dare you commit such murderous shame upon yourself! It is worth noting the Elizabethans believed that every time a man ejaculates, he takes a certain number of hours or days off of his life (which in itself would make an fascinating morality tale: the Young Man who masturbates so much he begins to regress in age).

The sonnet presents a weak argument for procreation to the Young Man Virile. I can't image he has much concern for wetting a widow's eye, be it his or any other man's. Or even that he much cares about the world wailing over his dead corpse like a makeless, husbandless, wife. And even if he does have a wife and children, there is cold comfort in knowing she will be better off being able to remember his beauty in the snot nosed, sniveling, bawling spoiled children he will leave behind. The sense I get is that Shakespeare, through his intimate interactions with the Young Man, realizes the "you will have immortality through bearing children" argument is weak. He himself, the Poet, is being seduced by the profound beauty of his subject. The Poet has begun to idolize the Beauty, capital B, of the Young Man.

Thus, the octave theme of making the widow weep, the world wail, and the faint hope in beauty being passed on through children's eye seems pro forma. Boilerplate Shakespeare, if you will. The sestet is much more interesting as it essentially says that beauty's currency is not the same as money, quality is not the same as quantity. The Unthrift spends his money to another's gain, no quantity of money is lost in the world. But Beauty's Waste (evocative phrase, cf. S129) is a loss. If the quality of Beauty's "treasure"(S6) is not "spent" (cf. S4 and S129), is not "deposited" into the womb of a woman (S3), then it is, effectively, destroyed.

Or... or perhaps there is another way to memorialize this beauty for future ages...  But in that case, if the Young Man's beauty is to be used as a muse wherein it may be alchemized, transmuted, from base flesh, leaden body, to an ideal golden spirit, then the Young Man himself must be "idealized" in a rigorous Neoplatonic sense. The Poet needs to have the Young Man create another self, a Platonic Self, that can be "aesthetisized " (Vendler) through poetry into an enduring, transcendental form - which is precisely what S10 seeks to do.

Berlinde De Bruyckere - V. Eeman - source

Q1:

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye,
That thou consum'st thy self in single life?
Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;

Figure the scene extending from the previous sonnet. The Young Man's soul remains stilled by the echoes of the sorrowful music. The Poet's words conjure images of the happy harmonious family in the Young Man's heart. But this only makes the Young Man more melancholy. He knows that death comes to all things. And even if he marries and has a child, he will one day die. Just thinking on this sorrow, on the sorrows of his dying, on the sorrows of his wife, on those of his children, is enough to dissuade him from ever involving himself with another.

He tells this to the Poet, who, hearkening back to Sonnet 1 and the line,

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

tells the Young Man: your reflexive self-love, your Narcissistic self-absorption, feeds upon itself for the brightness of your beauty. You are burning yourself out in this isolated singularity. Here the wasting of semen in the masturbatory acts of self-love, is relevant. The Poet warns the Young Man if he dies before any of his semen / treasure / beauty is put to good use, well-spent, the entire world will morn, like a wife with no husband, for such a tragic loss. I imagine a vast chorus of uneared, unplanted wombs all crying out for the Young Man's seed, vaginal mouths wailing for the loss of being able to bear the Young Man's child, like the Trojan Woman beating their uteruses in lament for all the dead children spilled upon the infertile sheets of the Young Man's bed. Note the Elizabethans believed the man alone was responsible for all the genetic character of the child. The woman merely provided the womb for it to grow, as a seed is planted into fertile soil.


Q2:

The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep
By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind:

All these Ws: world, will, widow, weep, when, widow, well. There may be a fanciful case to be made (cf. Robert Irwin) for a "double you" - the child as a living mimetic reproduction. Here in Q2, the imagery is only amplified. Alliteration assists in memorization and also metered time and rhyme. Note the double widow: thy widow and every private widow. Private is odd. Booth stretches to suppose Shakespeare is working a macaronic pun on the etymological root of private in privare, to bereave. Hmm. It works more as a contrastive structure, your widow has no child, no form of you to sooth her grief over your death, while even an ordinary widow is able to see her husband in her children's faces and, one hopes, find some non-incestual solace there.

Q3:

Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unused the user so destroys it.

The Unthrifty Lovliness from S4 returns as the Prodigal Unthrift. Perhaps in the Wedding Party there is another man who the Poet points out to the Young Man. They watch as he hands out gifts of cash and coin to the bride and groom and the rest of the wedding party. Look at that Unthrift, the Poet says, his money simply moves from one pocket to another. There's no loss of Money overall in the world. But Beauty, says the Poet, looking at the Young Man, Beauty such as you possess, if it is not used, it is lost, destroyed, food for worms (S6), etc.. Do not waste your Beauty. Such a lovely phrase: beauty's waste hath in the world an end. Even the corollary: beauty's use hath in the world no end. After all the weeping of widows and children with their father's faces, the image of the Prodigal Unthrift, the lovely beauty's waste, destroys comes down hard in the ear. Preparation for the severe couplet perhaps.

Couplet:

  No love toward others in that bosom sits
   That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.

The Poet is no longer pulling his punches here. Maybe he's sick of the melancholy Young Man sitting sadly listening to the music, bemoaning the sorrow his widow might suffer. The intimacy and impertinence are arresting. You have no love for any other, the Poet says. Do you know how I know that? Because you commit upon yourself a Murderous Shame! I see the Young Man stirring from his sullen slouch. Wait! What do you mean? Where did that come from? What murder? What shame? I'm just sad and now you're throwing all of this at me. What does this mean?

It means, the Poet, tells him: you hate yourself because you are negating your own Beauty.

Cain with Bird - Henri Vidal - source