Wordplay and other Devices

One of the most obvious ways that Shakespeare manipulates language is found in his repetition of words. Throughout the sonnets, Shakespeare capitalizes on the multiple meanings present in a single word or sound: an example of this tendency are the words from line 2 of Sonnet 104 “when first your eye I eyed”. This isn’t done for any reason other than the pure delight of the sounds that make up language. He wrote that line that way because he could, and because it was musical, playful, and fun. In Sonnet 43, wordplay reaches new levels. The first repetition of words occurs in line 4, with “And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed,” in which the original oxymoronic “darkly bright” gives way to “bright in dark directed,” which could mean either “my bright eyes are directed through the dark night,” or “my eyes are directed to your bright image in the dark night”. Next, in line 5 (“Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright”), Shakespeare places the word “shadow” next to itself in a deliberate inversion (writing “whose shadow doth make shadows bright” would have fit the rhythm just as well, but taken away much of the poetry) to emphasize the idea that this one shadow, a dream image of a lover, has the power to brighten even the most shadowy darkness. In line 6, we get the word “shadow’s” again (there’s a progression from ‘shadow’ – singular – to ‘shadows’ – plural – to ‘shadow’s’ – possessive) with the words “How would thy shadow’s form form happy show”. “Form” is a classic pun, playing on the double meanings of form as a noun meaning ‘shape’ or ‘body’ and a verb meaning ‘make’. The last clear example of wordplay through repeated words occurs in line 7, “To the clear day with thy much clearer light”. In this case, although ‘clear’ is used as an adjective both times, with the phrase “thy much clearer light,” there is a sense of ambiguity as to exactly what the poet means. Either one of, or both, meanings of ‘clearer’ could be used: ‘clear’ meaning ‘bright’, or ‘clear’ meaning ‘perfect’ or ‘unblemished’.

Synecdoche, or the substitution of a part of a thing for the whole thing (e.g. saying “All hands went down” when talking about a shipwreck, when you really mean “All the sailors went down”), is also used in Sonnet 43. Helen Vendler, in her essay “Synecdoche in the Sonnets,” (which deals primarily with Sonnet 128, “How oft when thou, my music, music play’st”) speaks about Shakespeare’s frequent use of this technique throughout the sonnets. She says that synecdoche is useful in lyric poetry (such as sonnets) because it reduces the whole universe to the key elements of the personages in the poem. This, in turn, elevates the subject matter of the poem into the realm of universality of human emotion: “What is implicit, in this raising of the human figure to the scale of all that exists, is the vastness, to human consideration, of the self and its immediate concerns” (Vendler, 243). In Sonnet 43, the speaker is reduced to a consciousness that thinks of the sonnet, and a pair of eyes that sees and dreams. The lover is a shadowy dream-image. In the first stanza, all that really matters is the speaker’s eyes dreaming about his lover. The whole rest of the world is relegated to the status of “things unrespected” (line 2). Midway through the second stanza, the eyes are presented with a new possibility: the lover’s actual self, as seen in daylight. Thus, the whole tangle of emotional complexities associated with being absent from a lover gets reduced to the contrasts between seeing nothing in the light of day, seeing a beautiful bright vision in dreams, and wanting to see an even more beautiful, brighter image in daylight

Not surprisingly, most of the imagery in this sonnet is the imagery of contrast between day and night, and between sleep and wakefulness. The first example of this occurs in line 4, with “darkly bright, are bright in dark directed”. This gives a mental image of bright eyes looking at a bright shadow through a blanket of darkness. Brightness and darkness, day and night, are also closely associated with life and death: see “living day” in line 9, paralleled by “dead night” in line 10. (This association is common in literature, and recurs throughout poetry of this time period). This contrast is heightened by Shakespeare’s use of the words “shadow” and “shade” in reference to his lover’s image. These words both mean ‘darkness’ as well as ‘image,’ and also have strong connotations of ghosts and death: they can also mean ‘ghost’ or ‘spirit’.

Sonnet 43 makes use of several other devices. Paradox occurs fairly often: the poem opens with a great paradox (“When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see”) that begs (and gets) resolution in the first quatrain and gets the reader’s attention (as well as alerting him or her to the verbal trickery going on throughout the sonnet). Two paradoxes, each helping to resolve the other (a pair of doxes?) form the closing couplet: “All days are nights to see till I see thee / And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.” This holds the lover as a constant, magical force with the power to literally transform day into night, and vice versa, by the sheer force of his/her presence. A third paradox occurs in line 5, with the lover’s shadow brightening shadows. This ties into the oxymorons “darkly bright” (line 4) and “fair imperfect shade” (line 11). “Fair imperfect shade” is especially nice because it’s such a beautiful and streamlined way of saying that, although the lover’s image is beautiful to behold, it pales in comparison to the real thing.

The last really important device (other than rhyme and meter) in Sonnet 43 is alliteration. Not as much alliteration occurs here as does in the other sonnets, but there still is some. The most obvious example is “shade shines so” in line 8; however, other examples include “dark directed” (4), “looking…living” (10), and “sleep…sightless…stay” (12). Anyone reading a poem aloud should take special note of alliteration, since it often creates additional emphasis of a word or phrase.