SONNETS 58-69
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Sonnet 58
That God forbid, that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand th�account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure.
Oh let me suffer (being at your beck)
Th�imprisoned absence of your liberty,
And patience tame, to sufferance bide each check,
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list, your charter is so strong,
That you your self may privilege your time
To what you will, to you it doth belong,
Your self to pardon of self-doing crime.
I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.
Sonnets 57 and 58 are linked by the common imagery of enslavement
to the ideal. While the Mistress sequence presents the logical conditions for
beauty and truth, the youth sonnets focus particularly on the traditional
confusions over the logic of the ideal. The introduction of the male �God�
of religion in sonnet 58 intensifies the arguments of the previous sonnets.
As noted, sonnet 58 is the first in the set to use the word God. The only
other sonnet in the youth sequence to use the word is sonnet 110. In both
cases in the 1609 original, the word God has a capital �G�. Most modern
editions omit the capitals. The only other use of �God� is in sonnet 154,
where �the little Love-God� is the Roman �Cupid� named in sonnet 153.
The poet Ted Hughes speculates in Shakespeare and the Goddess of
Complete Being on the profound effect the religious excesses of the
Reformation may have had on Shakespeare. His family and others suffered
persecution in the name of God as two sects fought over the absolute right
to the ideal. So his use of the word God in sonnet 58 could reflect both
logical and personal issues.
Sonnet 58 identifies �God� as the one who first made the Poet a �slave�
to his youth. The paradox is that if the Poet �in thought� (58.2) wants to
�control� the youth�s �pleasure�, or make an �account� of the hours the youth
�craves�, how can a slave �stay your leisure� (58.4). Being a slave to the mindbased
sensation of the singular ideal (God), precludes an argument against
unthinking sensuous indulgence.
The Poet facetiously offers to suffer �imprisoned absence� (58.5) and to
exercise �patience� at the �checks� caused by the youth�s �liberty�, without
accusing him of �injury� (58.8). If God, as the archetypal male adolescent,
makes the Poet a slave, and he suffers the constraint, then he cannot exercise
his �thoughts� or the dynamic of truth to accuse the youth of injury.
Sonnet 57 stated that only a �fool in love� would �think no ill� of such
behaviour. So in sonnet 58, the Poet asserts that the God-based �charter�
(58.9) the youth uses to sanction his willfulness, encounters the contradiction
as to how �your self to pardon of self-doing crime� (58.12).
The couplet is uncompromising. If the youth expects the Poet �not to
blame (his) pleasure be it ill or well�, then the Poet may as well be waiting in
�hell�. Because the ideal as the absolute good is unmitigated sensation, it
becomes indistinguishable from its evil consequence. Sonnet 58 details the
wrong that comes from thinking �no ill� (57.14). Together sonnets 57 and 58
assert that the idealised male God, divorced from the capacity to determine
right and wrong, readily becomes its logical opposite, the evil of �hell�.
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Roger Peters Copyright © 2001
Introduction
1-9
10-21
22-33
34-45
46-57
58-69
70-81
82-93
94-105
106-117
118-129
130-141
142-153
154
Emendations
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