Dramatic Interpretations

When reading Shakespeare's sonnets aloud, you have to take rhythm and scansion into consideration to a degree that most people  aren't used to.  Sonnet 43, subjected to scansion, reads like this:

Although the meter is primarily iambic pentameter, there are deviations from the meter.  These metrical ambiguities and variations keep the poem from sounding too monotonous or jangling; they give it a living quality.  As Hollander says, the slight distortions of meter form a large part of the musical quality of poetry (Hollander, 6).

In dealing with deviations from meter, one has to be careful.  Too many, or too wildly deviant lines can obscure the essential meter running through the poem, leading to confusion and ugliness.  However, if it is done right (and Shakespeare was a master), placing slightly different stresses on words than pure iambic pentameter dictates can really enhance a poem, not merely by giving it the "sound of poetry" that Hollander speaks of (6), but by emphasizing certain words, phrases, and lines.  Therefore, anyone reading a poem aloud must pay careful attention to the stresses in the poem or line of poetry.  Sticking to pure iambic pentameter would make the poem sound sing-songy and stupid, like the monotonous tinkle of an ice-cream truck.  Poetry was originally meant to be sung; reading poetry requires as much careful attention to sound as singing does.

To read Sonnet 43 aloud, first you have to decide how to interpret it; the poem will have a different feel and sound if you recite it, for example, as a monologue addressed to an absent person rather than a direct address to a person (speaking alone at night versus discussing the feelings  in the poem over coffee the next morning).  Different interpretations of the poem, and different situations, will lead to different tones and inflections in the reading; for example, reading the poem as if you were alone at night might cause greater intensity of emotion and more concentration on the speaker (more emphasis on "I", "mine", etc.), whereas reading the poem as if you were speaking to another person about what happened last night will probably make  you somewhat more detached from the emotional thrust of the poem and more focused on the other person (emphasizing "thee", "thy", etc.).  Try reading the poem aloud both ways, and see what differences you perceive.  As an example, look at line 3, "But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee".  If you were reading this as if you were alone, you would probably give greater emphasis to the stressed syllable "look" rather than the stressed syllable "thee"; after all, you're focusing on yourself and your emotions.  Your eyes are looking.  The other person is less consequential.  Conversely, if you're addressing this sonnet to your date over coffee, you'll probably emphasize "thee" over "look".

When reading poetry, you also have to be aware of the effects of sound and wordplay.  Frequently, Shakespeare repeats words throughout a sonnet, even within a line, to create a musical effect and to emphasize the ideas contained within the words.  Examples of this are "darkly bright are bright in dark reflected" (4), "thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright/How would thy shadow's form form happy show"(5-6), and "clear day with thy much clearer light"(7).  The challenge is how to give the repeated words the weight that Shakespeare intended them to have, and how to give definition to these words, without driving them like a skewer through the listeners' heads.  If you give repeated words, particularly words repeated right next to each other like "shadow shadows" or "form form", the exact same intonation and emphasis, the effect will be unbearably monotonous and confusing.  It will sound like an announcement made over a shoddy PA system in a crowded train station or airport, and nobody wants that.  Frequently, you can find guides to dealing with this in either the rhythm of the phrase, the actual denotation of the phrase, or both.

"Form form" is  actually fairly easy to deal with.  The meter of the line indicates that the first "form" should take more stress than the second ("form" number one is the second syllable of an iamb; the second "form" is the first syllable of the next iamb).  Then, upon looking up "form" in the dictionary, you can discern that "thy shadow's form" uses "form" as a noun meaning, approximately, "shape".  "Form happy show" uses "form" as a verb meaning "to make".  If you substitute "shape" and "make", you get "How would thy shadow's shape make happy show," which, although it's ugly, makes more sense in modern English and gives you a better idea of how the phrase should be intoned in the original sonnet.

"Shadow shadows" presents a bit more of a problem.  Meter provides no help, because these words form two iambs: "shadow shadows".  Going to the dictionary, you learn that "shadow shadows" means approximately "image shadows", which doesn't help either.  The phrase, taken in its entirety, means "Then you, whose image makes shadows bright" - Shakespeare inverted the sentence for poetic effect.  In this case, probably the best course of action would be to slightly pause and to give the second "shadows" a bit more weight.  This will serve to differentiate the shadows from each other.  It also emphasizes the fact that the lover's apparition makes even the shadows bright.

A last consideration to take deals with alliteration, or repeated intial consonants.  When Shakespeare employs these, it's often a cue to slow down and savor the sounds of the words.  A prime example of this in Sonnet 43 is the phrase "shade shines so!" (8).  This is almost a tongue-twister with its repeated "sh" sounds - if you don't slow it down and really enunciate each word, giving weight to each syllable, you will get it wrong.  Therefore, anyone reading the sonnet should probably recognize this as a dramatic moment in the sonnet (the exclamation point helps, too) and milk it for all it's worth.