An argument for less literalism and more metaphor, symbolism, and other rhetorical devices in Shakespeare's sonnets.(Critical essay)

From my letters to the editor (Fall 2006 & Winter 2007) and a previous article (Spring 2007) citing my work, it might have become clear to some that I have my own theory of Shakespeare's sonnets. My theory is related to the Prince Tudor conjecture in what I think is its simplest form. My theory generally takes a different approach to understanding the sonnets if one can generalize that there is such a thing. Among the key differences are the order, the subjects addressed in individual sonnets, and the expressions of the message. I want to focus on the last of these because, while I feel that my interpretation of the sonnets is correct, I may very well be wrong. I would like to offer others at least what 1 view as a very powerful element for seeing potential meanings in the sonnets that they likely are not presently seeing.

It is important to recognize the things that represent our current failings in reading and deciphering the sonnets. We as Oxfordians have not come up with what can be regarded as a compelling case for either Oxford's authorship of the sonnets or the sonnets' relationship to his personal life.

A well-visited Oxfordian theory by Hank Whittemore, attempts to find a structure in the sonnets with the notion that there are 100 sonnets embedded inside essentially equal portions on either end. Such a structure could be affirmed for any even number between 100 and 154, and it oddly fails to address the long delay in the publication of the work or how clues to this structure are to be found. It also lacks substantiation for the premises claimed with respect to either the specific timing of the sonnets as claimed or their meanings as described. It further strikes me as a completely artificial and forced attempt to fit the sonnets to events instead of seeing them as a response to events.

In another theory, Ron Hess, a frequent contributor and very prolific authorship researcher and writer offers a theory positing a very abstract nature for the meaning of the sonnets expressing the wish of elevating the then early and seemingly immature English language. This theory strikes me personally as quite an unsatisfactory explanation for such intimate poetry expressing emotions that are both extremely powerful and frequently sorrowful or which contain such raw anger. And the assertion that the poet avouched for the form of the 1640 sonnets seems rather at its face a lie when so many of the poems contained are not even by Shakespeare. However, I am personally in agreement with the general dating of the sonnets as I date them from around the early 1570s to 1601.

Many other sonnet commenters and theorists find what no doubt at the time would have been considered sexual perversion not to mention strange and unlikely romantic entanglements. I offer that all of these theories are wrong and one of the chief problems with them is largely the inability to understand the real essence of the poetry.

Also startling is the way modern readers, particularly the academics that are most likely to comment on the sonnets, express that the sonnets frequently do not tie together in terms of the thoughts expressed. Specifically as an example, Katherine Duncan-Jones uses the characterization of "somewhat lame conclusion" to describe how the couplet ends Sonnet 99. Or more generally, in commentary to his editing, Stephen Booth describes the "unstable and randomly dynamic locutions" that the sonnets employ or explains why as he …