著者

早乙女 忠

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.1, pp.29-39, 1970

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In Shakespeare's sonnet 146, the poet, using the conventional means of distinguishing between soul and body, addresses his "poore soule" and tries to wake it up ("Then soule live thou upon thy servants losse .../Within be fed, without be rich no more"). We may say that this sonnet arises from the 'story' behind The Sonnets, even though it seems to have no direct relationship with it. For some reason he has to say, "Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth/Painting thy outward walls so costlie gay?" (Italics mine) These lines are adapted from the Biblical passage in Matthew 23:27, (according to The Bishops' Bible)" Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees hypocrites, for yee are like unto painted (AV whited) sepulchres, which indeed appeare beautiful outward, but are within ful of dead mens bones, and of all filthinesse (AV uncleanness)." Shakespeare blames his soul emphatically by introducing Christ's denunciation of hypocrisy in his verse. Although sonnet 146 consists in the process of such self-criticism and tragically determined resolution, it is free from any curse upon the body which is found in sonnet 129. The first two quatrains consist of four interrogative sentences and each sentence is shortened one by one (the first is four lines long, the second two, the third one and a half, and the fourth half). At first the poet reasons fully and lastly asks a pointblank question somewhat ironically. The third quatrain is in the imperative mood. Its style is plain, forthright and proverbial and forms an antithesis like "Within be fed, without be rich no more." And Shakespeare concludes the poetic doctrine of 'salvation without the Saviour' by remarking in the last couplet "So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,/And death once dead, ther's no more dying then." Sir Walter Ralegh's "The Lie" is another example of the poetry of resolution based on the Platonic principle. The determination and self-persuastion in the first and last stanzas make the cynical and radical cry of the main part of this poem sound pathetic and real. Moreover, "Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:/What ever fades, but fading pleasure brings," the third and fourth lines of Sir Philip Sidney's Plantonic poem, beginning with "Leave me o Love," are also the expression of the poet who determines to live afresh. (We may point to the verbal similarity between Sidney's poem and Shakespeare's sonnet 146.) Fulke Greville and John Donne write extraordinary poems of determination based on Christian-Platonic doctrine. The poetic elevation generated by the Neoplatonic idea in Milton's early peoms is seen in one of his great epic. Compare "the deep trnsported mind may soare/Above the wheeling poles, and at Heav'ns dore/Look in ...' in "At a Vacation Exercise in the College" with "my adventrous Song,/That with no middle flight intends to soar/Above th' Aonian Mount ..." in Paradise Lost. The latter shows his literary ambition-the writing of the Christianized epic-and is, as is shown, based on the youthful passion for Platonism apparent in the former. A common theme of the antithesis between soul and body was, in short, brought to life by the poetic structure of determination. On the other hand, by Milton and even a poet like Marvell the same poetry of aspiration was written with their variation.