SHAKESPEARE'S BELOVED
The Solution to the Riddle of Shakespeare's Sonnets
by
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CHAPTER ONE The Launching and Foundational Quest Beginning at the journey’s beginning then, with the very first line of the first sonnet, we have the statement: "From fairest creatures we desire increase" This is not mere "poetic phraseology" addressed to some person, male or female, as object of the poet’s subjective fancy and desire, whom he intends to shower with 154 loving heart-leaves of his wit’s invention. It is a statement of fact. And as such, it sets forth for the coming humanity of our modern post-Christian age that proposition which, for our further evolution, expresses the central impulse at the foundation of the human soul. Its profound import and depth of intelligence achieves greater clarity and its true significance when we contrast this statement with that other proposition of the ancient pre-Christian world with which Aristotle, characterizing the fundamental soul state of humanity at that time, begins his Metaphysics: "All men by nature desire to know" Rephrased to show its correspondence thereto -- not wishing to be philosophical with the Poet, but just to bring his lead thought into greater definition -- his opening line reads: All human beings from the fairest of creatures desire increase We are here confronted, at the very beginning of our journey through the sonnets, with this fundamental affirmation of our human being. Only it is not, as with the Greek, simply, for "knowledge" that we now are seeking; not, simply, for that "enlightenment" which is the basis of Wisdom. Our desire now is for increase of being. The "increase of being" spoken here does not come automatically "by nature" i.e. by itself as an innate unfolding, like the ability to walk, speak, and think in the natural course of growing up: but rather from our relationship, whether man or woman, to a very definite being, namely, the fairest of all creatures. How many thousands and countless thousands of times have these four opening lines been read and interpreted, along with the rest of the sonnets, as being but a male’s egotistical desire for an offspring of his blood, generated by physical intercourse, who would perpetuate for him what in his vanity he personally presumes to be the rose of his own beauty! How very vapid, fatuous, and mundane! Consider only what a woman would then be. She would be relegated to the role of a pretty mother, whose whole significance lies in satisfying that male blood-egotism; who, though "fair", has herself no "increase" besides the rising in her midriff when producing the offspring she is, for him, to bear. And how does that tally with the women in Shakespeare’s plays: how with Imogen in Cymbeline, Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Rosalind in As You Like It, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Viola in Twelfth Night, or, What You Will, Paulina in The Winter’s Tale, etc., in whom, in each case, the full import, guiding will and intelligence of the whole drama is invested? No. The great error in interpreting Shakespeare’s sonnets (which germinally contain much of what is more fully explicated in his dramas) has always been to read into them what is not there, instead of reading out of them what is. And what is read into them is what we ourselves carry in our heart and mind, presupposing them to mean what we might think, feel, and will. Fine, if we bring that beauty, truth, and goodness to them which they themselves contain. But, failing this, we have for the most part let them mirror the impurities, errors, and superficiality of our own soul state, rather than reading out of them the breadth of purity, scope of truth, and cosmic largess that he, out of his great sun spirit, openly concealed in them. Upon what do we imagine the eternal fame of Shakespeare’s poetic genius to actually rest? A couple of love affairs? Read the lines, for the "Ever Living Poet’s" sake, and do not simply imagine them to be the expression of one’s prejudices and sensuously limited state of consciousness (as if he did not rise above our shallow plane of thought and signify quite more with his words than what we might imagine). Take them very literally and imagine big! What does Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, himself the great representative of the following Age of German Romanticism and Philosophic Idealism -- which Shakespeare also inspired -- say of him? He calls him "Ein Wesen höherer Art" "A being of a higher order" Think of the incredible radiance, the immeasurable "outreach" these plays have enjoyed since they were first conceived! What a tremendous blessing humanity has received from them! With what wit and wisdom they have entertained! What a warmth and nobility of thought and feeling they have called forth! How keenly and courageously they have confronted the reality of evil! What life-giving impulses they have produced, and in how many ways they have inspired, not only individuals, but whole nations! Like a great sun Shakespeare’s spirit rose up in humankind at the end of the Cinquecento, and has shed its illuminating rays over the entire globe ever since. As "time is the image of eternity" ( - Plato), so the sun in the sky, that disc on the outer vault of heaven, is the image of the eternal Sun Spirit, which opens up the immeasurable new horizons of man’s inner world, shedding it’s life-sustaining light into his soul, and seeking ever to unite itself with man’s lesser earthly blood-bound self. [Our earthly self, more accurately spoken, is not a self at all, but a mere reference to a self. When we speak the name "I", we have a reflection in thought, a moon-mirrored image of our true Self: a self-consciousness, not the actual being of the "I", who lives eternally in us, and seldom peeps through the countless little "I am" affirmations of our daily temporal self. But it is this eternal Sun Self that Shakespeare sees as the true being of the Beloved, risen over the inner horizons of our human being and spreading its wings in love to unite our inner horizon with the outer horizon in which we strive with "Will" to perfect our being -- and then to make them one.] "But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? -- Romeo and Juliet II, 2 Now the "spirit" is both infinite and eternal, but the soul, before it grows up into its own spirit, is finite and a prisoner of time. In the finite world of space and time the essence of every thing is defined according to the category of Quantity. All things are numbered, weighed, and measured in terms of the quantitative laws of this finite universe.
"From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But, as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory;"
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it; cast is off.
It is my lady; O! it is my love.
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About the Book
Shakespeare’s Sonnets have been a mystery every since they were first published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe in London. Millions have been fascinated by their wisdom and beauty, and more millions puzzled by the way their content has been formulated in terms of a hidden "dramatis personae": the lovely boy, the black-eyed mistress, the rival poets, the tenth muse, the fair friend, the better angel, the female evil, etc. Taking the reader on the journey through the sonnets, Rudolf Schmid shows, in the "truth and beauty" of the Poet’s own words, how this adventure reveals itself to be a path latently present as a dormant seed in the will of "Everyman", every human soul, leading it to the birth and unfoldment of its own "sweet self", thus answering the Poet’s call: "make thee another self for love of me." In the course of the adventure the riddle of the "who" behind the personages of the dramatis personae, including the object of the Dedication itself --- Mr. W. H. ---, and, of course, Shakespeare’s Beloved, is, once and for all, solved.
About the Author
Born and raised in Chicago, schooled at Beloit College, University of Chicago, and Indiana University, Rudolf Schmid began his teaching career at the founding school of the International Waldorf School Movement in Stuttgart, Germany. For 25 years he taught, traveled, and studied the cultural life of Europe and parts of the Near East and North Africa devoting himself in the last 15 years to the development of the young art of Eurythmy as teacher, performer, choreographer, and director of his own school. Since his return to America, he has continued to be active as educator, choreographer and author.