Speaker and Subject
Shakespeare’s sonnets are typically classified in reference to speaker and subject. Sonnet 32 is commonly accepted as a “handsome youth” sonnet. This classification as a handsome youth sonnet is significant as it characterizes both the speaker and the subject within the sonnet: the speaker, as a man displaying his affection for the subject who is a young, handsome man.
The identity of the speaker is a well debated topic however. Some believe that the speaker is merely a character that Shakespeare has created as an expression of art. However, the speaker is often thought to be Shakespeare himself, thus giving the content of the sonnet a much more personal sentiment. Some depict the voice of the speaker merely as a “construct” character by the author to “generate…reader interest, sympathy, and involvement that deserve closer attention”. Thus the speaker is not a reflection of the author but instead an authorial tool to evoke interest from the reader.
In contrast, some critics believe that Shakespeare’s sonnets are “autobiograph” and that the two characters within the sonnet are Shakespeare and an unidentified male object of lust or affection.
Ultimately, there is “critical disagreement” over whether the character of Shakespeare’s speaker is ambiguous, Shakespeare himself, or a constructed character.
Read more about this topic: Sonnet 32
Famous quotes containing the words speaker and, speaker and/or subject:
“Good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it. The length of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer. If they were at a perfect understanding in any part, no words would be necessary thereon. If at one in all parts, no words would be suffered.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is a terrible blindness in the love that wants only to accommodate. It’s not only to do with omissions and half-truths. It implants a lack of being in the speaker and robs the self of an identity without which it is impossible for one to grow close to another.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“The entire construct of the “medical model” of “mental illness”Mwhat is it but an analogy? Between physical medicine and psychiatry: the mind is said to be subject to disease in the same manner as the body. But whereas in physical medicine there are verifiable physiological proofs—in damaged or affected tissue, bacteria, inflammation, cellular irregularity—in mental illness alleged socially unacceptable behavior is taken as a symptom, even as proof, of pathology.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)