(mellow music) - Louis, would you read sonnet 94, Shakespeare sonnet 94 to me?

- Eva, I would be delighted.

It's like asking me to drink some fine wine.

As long as you promise to answer all the questions I will have about this afterwards.

- I don't promise.

- Okay, Sonnet 94 by Shakespeare.

They that have the power to hurt and will do none, that do not do the thing they most to show, who moving others are themselves as stone, unmoved cold and to temptation slow, they rightly do inherit heaven's graces, and husband nature's riches from expense.

They are the lords and owners of their faces.

Others but stewards of their excellence.

The summer's flowers to the summer sweet, though to itself, it only live and die.

But if that flower with base infection meet, the basis weed out-braves his dignity, for sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds, lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

- Weeds.

(laughing) - It's hard not to put a little, you know?

- Yes, absolutely.

- A little point in there at the end, isn't it?

- Yes.

- So Eva, my first question is... Well, actually it's two questions I'd like to ask you.

Why do you find yourself at the age of 92 plus reading Shakespeare's sonnets?

- 92 and three quarters.

- 92, almost 93.

Reading Shakespeare's sonnets, which are mostly about love, romantic love.

And why in particular did you want me to read 94 of all the...

There's 154 sonnets and why this one?

- Well, as far as the answer to the first question is concerned, you think there is a date on love?

- I can say at the age of 61, I have not found that yet to be so.

- And I will tell you that at the age of 92 and three quarters, I have not found it to be the case either.

- Really?

- And the other one, the other question is, why is it my favorite?

Because, look, I turned to the first page of my book of the sonnets, and I have a notation there.

Rule for rating the sonnets, go for the logic.

And this is a sonnet that has a lot of logic in it.

- Ah, so you think there's an argument being made?

- There's an argument, yes.

- Okay, with a beginning and promises-- - But if you think that that entitles you to ask me what the argument is, I don't.

- No, I'm very interested.

I mean, one of the things one hears about the sonnets as a schoolboy, I can remember this, is that they often begin with a certain problem and he's got 14 lines, three quatrains and a couplet to flesh it out and hopefully solve it often in the couplet.

It sounds like you're at least in general kind of agreeing with that.

- Yes, yes.

Except that I'm specifying what it means to set a problem.

It means to engage in some sort of logically connected speech and it leaves us with the interesting proposition that love and logic, passion and thinking are closely intertwined.

- That's excellent.

- Thank you.

- But-- - A plus?

- Yeah.

So, you mean it's not that love has a logic of it's own that's kind of sort of different from what we normally use that word for.

It is itself-- - Itself.

- -logical as say mathematics is logical.

- Yes, I think so.

- And you like 94 because it's particularly exemplary in this way?

- Yes, that's one reason.

But I have another more particular reason.

It shows Shakespeare's... Well, you know, you and I teach at a school that makes fidelity and interest in texts ancient and modern of sort of our major enterprise.

That's what we do, we read books.

- Over and over.

- Over and over.

Well, here is Shakespeare showing that he was familiar both with Aristotle and with the Bible.

- Okay.

So I can see the Aristotle.

Let me make a suggestion at this point, and we'll get back to Aristotle and the Bible.

What if we went through this sonnet, quatrain by quatrain, and notice things like the Aristotle that's there-- - On the way.

- And just talked about what jumps out at us.

- Let's do it.

- Okay.

Because I think we meet Aristotle pretty quickly.

- Yeah and the Bible at the end.

- Yeah.

So first I'll do the first quadrant, okay?

They that have power to hurt and will do none, that do not do the thing they most to show who moving others are themselves as stone unmoved, cold and to temptation slow.

- Yes.

- What do you notice?

- Well, first of all, I notice that that's not the whole thought, right?

- Right.

- Who are they?

- There's no verb.

- There's no verb.

- Yet.

- Who are they?

And what are their characteristics?

But he is... Well, look, I'll confess.

I confess that I use some commentaries.

I read some commentaries.

I won't name them.

But I found them spectacularly unhelpful.

They didn't tell me what it is that puzzled me.

That is, who are they that have power to hurt and will do none, that do not do the thing they must do show?

Who are they such that, as we soon learn, they are in some way, particularly gifted, particularly rich?

- And in some way are even comparable to the unmoved mover-- - Or even-- - -of Aristotle.

- Aristotle has the notion that there must be in a world where everything that moves is moved by something, there's got to be an ultimate being that moves without being moved.

That being seems to be referred to.

So we find not only that Shakespeare is learned, that is to say that he knows his Aristotle, and later we'll know that we'll find that he also knows his Bible, but we are presented with a wonderful proposition, which I do not...

I want to emphasize this, which the commentators who are learned and knowledgeable don't seem to have gotten, in my view.

Which is that there is something particularly poignant about them who have power to hurt and will do none.

And here (indistinct) understand that to work in a face of love.

When you're really in love, you would far rather be deeply hurt by something that is said or done to you by the person you love than you would be ignored.

- Ah, okay.

- That is, they have power to hurt, they could address you and make you feel terrible, but they won't even do that.

That is the worst.

- So I wanted to add, I mean, that opening line I think is stunning.

- It's stunning and this is my interpretation of it.

- Yeah.

So if I understand you, first, there's that they, opening line, which I think, by the way, is an inverted stress, so it's a (indistinct) rather than (indistinct).

They that have power to hurt and will do.

That kind of thing interests me.

So right away, he's grabbing you with this and the day is repeated in following lines twice, who are they, anyway?

But on the one hand, they're as great as the unmoved mover, there's something godlike about them.

But at the same time you're saying, though they are movers, they're not doing what you would want them to do.

because you want the...

I mean... - You would be far rather hurt by them-- - Than ignored.

- -which means that they would be attending to you than being ignored by them, which is what they do here.

They have power to hurt, they could say something cutting to you, but they won't even invest energy in doing that.

You're nothing to them.

- Yeah.

So I think we can make that even stronger with the second line, because they do not do the thing they most do show, they're showing it.

- They are.

- They're showing the thing.

- They're lovable.

They're showing lovableness.

And what they do not do is love.

- Is that because they lack courage?

- It's-- - (indistinct) have the courage to hurt?

- Yeah.

I think Shakespeare doesn't say what the character of their failure is, but it seems to me it could be interpreted in two ways.

- One is that they're without feeling, they're stones, which is certainly not a compliment to be a stone.

And the other one is that they are too inhibited, that is they don't express themselves.

But that's not the interesting one.

The interesting one is that they have the superiority of a stone over a living being, namely the stone doesn't care, the stone doesn't hurt anybody unless it happens to fall on you, so they are without ill will, without interest, without intention.

And to the object of that or the non-object of it, that's worse than anything else.

- Okay, yeah.

- Utter lack of interest.

- So that's one possibility that they're deficient in, say, expressive-- - And responsiveness.

- Yeah, expressive feeling.

- Yes.

- Or in capacity to love.

- Yeah.

Or simply in responsiveness.

- But the fourth line, that word temptation suggests it might be virtue that they don't fall prey to the normal temptations that people have.

That is the virtue of chastity.

- Yes.

But I think that is one version of it that we are to understand.

But it makes that (indistinct) so interesting because there's a kind of rebellion in it.

That is to say, everybody else would say, you should be slow to be tempted.

I say, in matters of love, that's not a virtue, that's a vice.

- And notice it's temptation, slow.

That doesn't mean temptation foolproof.

- It means being unresponsive and being unresponsive in matters of love is not a virtue.

- Is there another possibility here that this person, this beautiful, dignified, probably aristocratic young man, that the speaker of this poem finds himself admiring and maybe in love with, that this person is doing those things, but secretly hidden?

It doesn't look like he is, but there must be something going on, perhaps, now or in the future, that it's a kind of hypocrisy-- - Yes.

- -that they're appearing not to do something.

- It could be that it's a deliberate inhibition, whether from hypocrisy or embarrassment.

But I think that the speaker thinks that this is not something that ought to be admired.

The comparison of the persons or person addressed here... Undressed.

Undressed here.

Is there's something difficult about it.

I've read this poem with students and they often don't understand what is going on.

And if I may take a minute, I will ask them whether they have had the following experience of the unmoved mover who, as you know, Aristotle is God himself.

I say imagine down at our duck I'm talking to a boy, to a young man.

Imagine there is a young woman in a bathing suit, sunning herself, lying on a towel, and imagine yourself standing on the terrace up at the college, and you're looking down.

She's asleep, she isn't moving.

What happens?

Slowly you go down the steps, you have to go walk around the dining hall and down the lawn.

What has happened?

That's the case of (indistinct) in this poem.

- Yeah.

Can I add something to that?

Who moving others, plural, so there are multiple young men viewing this beautiful-- - You're absolutely right.

- -body.

- Put two or three on that terrace.

- Okay.

But then what is that beautiful, in this case, woman supposed to do?

- Well, she's asleep to begin with.

- Okay, so she wakes up.

- She wakes up, I think-- - And there's this poem left by her side.

- I think she should put her jacket on.

(laughing) - But isn't that sort of like, what's happening in the second line, that do not do the thing they most do show?

She's been showing herself.

- Yes.

- And now she puts the jacket on.

- Well, in that case, she can no longer be blamed, because then she no longer shows it.

- But I also have this problem in mind.

When there are multiple...

So you're a very beautiful person, man or woman, there are lots of people who love you.

Maybe you're aware of it.

- Oh, of course you are.

- You're aware of it, okay.

What do you do, pick one and say no to all the others?

Pick several, pick one at a time and move through several over time?

What is the beautiful person?

What's the law that governs that beauty?

And then maybe we need to get deeper into the poem to fully address that.

- Yes, yeah.

- But isn't there a problem there?

Isn't that part of the-- - For the-- - -the problem of the sonnet?

- For those that have power to hurt, that's their problem, right?

- Well, that's the hurt, right?

You pick one, not others, the others are hurt.

- Yes.

- Or you move around, then there's jealousy.

- Yeah, and I think the poem has an opinion about that, or rather Shakespeare has an opinion about it.

You should hurt rather than withdraw and be unresponsive.

I think the poem says something very, very strange.

It says it's more humane to hurt than to ignore.

- Yeah, I think that's right.

That is maybe initially counterintuitive because you shouldn't hurt people.

- Well, it's sounds counter intuitive to virtuous behavior, but what's virtue you got to do with love?

- By the way, I think I've mentioned this to you before, but he did write a play about this very problem.

- Yeah, you said.

- Measure for measure.

- Yeah, yeah.

- The two main characters, one's a man, one's a woman.

Angelo and Isabelle.

Both have power to hurt, because they're both in their ways very attractive and virtuous.

The woman wants to go to a convent, which is where maybe such people are tempted to go, but it's almost a tragedy because their power to hurt and wanting to do none turns out to cause great hurt anyway.

- And Louis, I have to tell you that if you tell me to read something, I want to read it.

And I was on the brink of reading it when I decided that in preparation for our conversation, I just better read the sentence once again.

- I can tell by the marginalia.

- You can tell by my marginalia, yeah.

- Can I point out one other thing that I think is really interesting in the opening quatrain that word thing in the second line.

- Yes.

- Do not do the thing they most do show.

Now, you've been saying that the thing is loving back.

Can we-- - Love making, yeah.

- Sex.

- Yeah, sex.

- Okay.

- Among other things, yes.

- Okay, yes.

- And the reason the possibility that it means sex is to be taken seriously is that when we come to the end of the poem there's an implication that sex-- - Indeed.

The (indistinct) is gonna come back.

- Yeah.

- And the final couplet with a strong implication of something quite physically-- - Dangerous.

- -dangerous, and, well, we'll get there.

So, let's do the next quatrain, if we're ready.

- You want to read it again?

- The first part also, or?

- No, just the quatrain you were talking about.

- So I was just gonna remind us we haven't yet gotten the main verb.

We've just got they, that, who, da da da.

Now we finally get it.

They rightly do inherit heaven's graces.

Okay, there it is.

And husband natures riches from expense.

They are the lords and owners of their faces.

Others but stewards of their excellence.

- Yes.

- Can I mention one thing right off that-- - Yeah, please.

- -kind of interests me and delights me?

That word expense.

A husband natures riches from expense.

There's one other poem.

This is just a matter of fact, of the 154, which like this poem, is impersonal.

That is, it's not an I poem and a the poem, which all the others are, but it has this tone of impersonal authority, just describing a certain kind of, in this case, person, but in that other case, it's 129, it's about lust.

- Yes.

- Opening line.

Just the opening line.

The expense of spirit-- - Of spirit.

- -in a waste of shame is lust in action.

And it's the same kind of tone as this, an impersonal, authoritative description of a certain condition.

- Yes.

And which made me immediately think that expense is (indistinct) here.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

It means both an expenditure and it means it's thinking of intercourse.

- Yes, indeed.

Husbanding nature's riches.

- From expense.

- What would nature's, again, I think Aristotle comes to mind.

- Yes.

- Nature in the deepest truest sense are living things who are most natural when they're reproducing.

- Yes, exactly.

- Exactly, yeah.

Strange word though, because the husband something, there's tension there.

I mean, the husband something, you think that you're helping it to grow.

It's like gardening or-- - Yes.

And then it turns out that your relation, that this is their relation to themselves, but the relation of the others, others, but stewards of the excellence is that of servants or even slaves.

- Yeah, yeah.

So others gets picked up from the first quatrain, who moving others of themselves as stone.

These others now become stewards.

- Yes, which means that they're simply either paid or unpaid caretakers.

- Okay, so what about that first line of the second quatrain?

I mean, we skipped right over, but I'm struck by they rightly do inherit heaven's graces.

- Yes.

- Why is this word right in there?

That seems to be an affirmation of this person's being.

- I think this carries on the sort of rebellious and counterintuitive claim of the first quatrain, namely that one should hurt and they inherit nature's graces by hurting.

- Wait a minute.

So they're hurting in any case, or they-- - Well, if they're beloved, they should respond.

- Okay.

- And they rightly do inherit nature's-- - Or heaven's.

- Heaven's graces.

- But they're not responding.

- If they're not responding.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm contradicting myself.

- They rightly do inherit heaven's graces and husband nature's riches from expense.

- No, you're right.

- That idea of inheritance I think goes with riches and then goes with the third line in that quatrain, owners, lords and owners, there's some sense of just having this inherited possession.

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