Shakespeare Sonnet 55 Term paper
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Elizabeth Lamanna
English 28A Higbee
11 Oct 01
The Serpent and the Flower in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 55
Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene II, Line 77
JUL: O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Macbeth, Act I, Scene V, Line 63
LADYMACB: Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under ’t.
Pericles: Son of Tyre, Act I , Scene I, Line 127
PER.: And both like serpents are, who though they feed
On sweetest flowers, yet they poison breed.
The serpent’s trickery of mortals is a theme which echoes tirelessly in the art, literature, and theology of both the Judaeo-Christian and Eastern philosophies. The instinctive illustration of the image of the serpent as a symbol of deceit for Western interpreters is the biblical (Genesis) creation story--putting forth a falsely kind face in order to urge a hero(ine) toward the loss of innocence--and the message is retained that the serpent will employ sweet-seeming logic that is, in truth, unsound and wield assurances which will ultimately be proven empty. Similarly, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh has returned from a journey to the bottom of a deep well and plucked from there a magic plant of knowledge with which he plans to return to his people. Taking a rest beside this pool, he falls asleep. A serpent slithers out from beneath a flower beside the pool and eats the magic plant, in some translations biting Gilgamesh as well. Here we see that, again, the serpent wishes to rob mortals of the power of knowledge(and the closeness to the Creator(s) in their theology that is implicit in that knowledge), this time by physically hiding itself beneath beauty. A case may be made that the serpent/flower imagery which Shakespeare uses to such extent in his plays comes both from the Christian creation story, in keeping with the faith of the Elizabethan era, but draws also from the Gilgamesh myth. The latter may seem less credible than the former to a modern reader, but Elizabethan scholars had far more extensive familiarity with classics in literature than is called for in present curricula. It is interesting that the Bard “recycled” this imagery with such repetition, when one considers that Shakespeare himself wrote in a flowery style that often packed an unexpected bite. A true master of the double entendre, and highly skilled at creating devilish puns--these facets of his writing are never so blatantly displayed as in Romeo and Juliet--Shakespeare’s experimental wordplay and frequent duality of purpose are keenly at work in Sonnet 55. This poem appears at first to be a sort of extreme peptalk, inspired by grand and undying passion for a friend or lover(it is unclear which), but, upon closer examination of its style and structure, underlying layers of a more sly intent emerge.
In analyzing the style of this sonnet, it is first worth noting the similarity in word choice and overall theme to that of one of the Odes of Horace, “Exegi monumentum…”:
Exegi monumentum aere perennius
regalique situ pyramidum altius,
quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens
possit diruere aut innumerabilis
annorum series et fuga temporum.
non omnis moriar multaque pars mei
vitabit Libitinam: usque ego postera
crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium
scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex.
(I have raised a monument more lasting than copper, higher than the royal structures of pyramids, which not the voracious rainstorm nor the powerless north wind, nor the numberless sequence of years nor the flight of ages can destroy. I shall not wholly die, and a large part of me shall survive Libitina : I shall arise with fresh praise in the future, as long as the high priest climbs the Capitoline Hill with silent virgins.)
Plainly, we can hark back to the earlier assumption of Shakespeare’s more-than-passing acquaintance with classical literature and see a deliberation in the similarities between Sonnet 55 and the ode here. Particularly the open lines strike one as too close to be coincidental. Aside from structurally, the sonnet owes much to the ode stylistically as well. It would not be amiss to suggest a conscious imitation of the shamelessly hyperbolic style...
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