Sonnet 128

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< Sonnet 128 >

How oft when thou, my music, music play’st,
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st

The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,

Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,
At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand!

To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more bless’d than living lips.

Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
–William Shakespeare

[edit] Synopsis

Sonnet 128 is the 128th of William Shakespeare’s sonnets, and the second of two musical sonnets. Its number suggests, like Sonnet 8, the octave of the scale as well as the 12 notes on the keyboard inside each octave.

Sonnet 128 is comparable to the sonnet in Romeo and Juliet in which Romeo pleads for a first kiss. Like that pilgrim/saint tête-à-tête, this sonnet is set in a public musical celebration. Shakespeare watches his dark lady play the keyboard virginal (or Bassano built clavichord), captivated by her back swaying with the melody. Like Romeo, he longs for a kiss, but in this sonnet he envies the jacks (wooden keys) that the lady’s playing fingers “tickle” while trilling the notes. Perhaps he also envies the other men (Jacks) standing around the lady. Surely, this is an amusing scene to Shakespeare because he secretly is having an affair with the dark lady. He decides not to envy those keys—although he would like to be tickled too—but hopes instead to receive a kiss on his lips.

Some think this sonnet was first written in 1592, when Shakespeare was first attracted to a likely candidate for the dark lady, the musical, cast-off, and pregnant former mistress, Emilia Lanier. Shakespeare wrote the lovely, teasing dialogue sonnet for his teenaged lovers in about 1595. He likely revised Sonnet 128 in 1604 and 1608. This sonnet’s creation—with its good bad puns on “jacks” and finger tickling and lips itching for a kiss—may come both before and after Romeo and Juliet.

Although she’s innocently playing a virginal or some other keyboard instrument, Shakespeare may know she has been an experienced mistress, since she was 18, of Queen Elizabeth’s cousin, Lord Hunsdon, two years before he became the patron of Shakespeare’s company. At the time of Sonnet 128, it is 1592, she is now 23, pregnant, and seeking male protection.[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Jensen, Peter (2007). Secrets of the Sonnets: Shakespeare’s Code. Morrisville, NC: Lulu. (ISBN 1430309237)

[edit] External links

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