SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived - Sonnet 99: The Forward Violet Thus Did I Chide

Sonnet 99: The Forward Violet Thus Did I Chide

09/15/24 • 39 min

SONNETCAST – William Shakespeare's Sonnets Recited, Revealed, Relived

In the collection of 154 sonnets by William Shakespeare published in 1609, Sonnet 99 is unique for two reasons that are possibly related: it is the only sonnet to consist of 15 lines instead of the usual 14, and it is the only sonnet that leans directly on a known source and can therefore be said to be a more or less direct reworking of an existing piece by another poet, rather than presenting a mere variation on a well-worn theme.

The theme itself though is familiar from both classical and Renaissance poetry, but Shakespeare, as we would probably expect by now, manages to furnish his poem with one twist in particular that suggests he may be engaging in more than just a standard rhetorical exercise of imitatio.

Previous Episode

Sonnet 98: From You Have I Been Absent in the Spring

When Sonnet 97 spoke of an absence from his lover that felt to Shakespeare "like a winter" even though it actually took place during the summer and/or autumn, Sonnet 98 speaks of either the same or a similar absence that took place during the springtime in April, which, however, on account of not having his lover around, to Shakespeare also seemed like "winter still."

With their many similarities and essentially identical themes, the two sonnets are clearly related, and it is unlikely to be a coincidence that they follow each other in the collection, although we cannot know whether our poet is here talking about a continuous absence from his lover that lasts all the way from late summer into the next spring, or whether he is talking about a renewed period of separation, or whether in fact the two sonnets have somehow got reversed in their order and we are looking at an absence that lasts from spring throughout the summer into the autumn.

This latter scenario seems an unlikely one, as we discussed when looking at Sonnet 97, and so indeed do various other theories which see both these sonnets as merely emotional but not physical periods of separation, or as either referring to periods of separation from two different people, something we also saw and noted in the last episode.

Next Episode

Special Guest: Professor David Crystal – Original Pronunciation (OP)

In this special episode, Professor David Crystal OBE, one of the world's leading linguists with over 100 books to his name and a global reputation as a writer and lecturer on Early Modern English, talks to Sebastian Michael about Original Pronunciation (OP) – the way William Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have pronounced English at the time, and how this changes our understanding of Shakespeare's works generally, and specifically the sonnets.