Paul Holchak

Stoic Idiom and Philomelen Silence in Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Beginning with sonnet 82, the speaker of Shakespeare’s sonnets contrasts the excellence of plain words (which he prefers) to the deficiency of the ornate style that is used by other poets to praise the beauty of the male youth, whom the first part of Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence addresses.  The speaker goes on to assert that silence is the most fitting praise for the youth.  He then compares his own voice to that of the tongueless Philomela in a striking simile from sonnet 102.  I will explore the speaker’s strained relation to poetic language as the beginning of his withdrawal from the homosocial contest for the affection of the young man, a movement that is finalized in sonnet 126.  The speaker’s preference for simple language and his affirmation of acquiescence—by withdrawing from the homosocial rivalry—show us a different sort of agency, one that is informed by stoic ethical tradition and that orients the activity of masculinity away from the aim of mastering others and points it instead toward a much more intense discipline of self-assessment with major implications for the gendering of voice in the Sonnets. 

Paul Holchak is a graduate student of English at the CUNY Graduate Center.  His focus is early modern and late medieval English poetry.  His interests include: historical understandings of masculinity and ethical agency, as well as Ovidian and Latin stoic reception.