(Michael
Drayton, 1563-1631)
How many
paltry foolish painted things,
That now in coaches trouble every street,
Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings,
Ere they be well wrapped in their winding-sheet!
Where I to thee eternity shall give,
When nothing else remaineth of these days,
And queens hereafter shall be glad to live
Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise.
Virgins and matrons, reading these my rhymes,
Shall be so much delighted with thy story
That they shall grieve they lived not in these times,
To have seen thee, their sex’s only glory:
So shalt thou fly above the vulgar throng,
That now in coaches trouble every street,
Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings,
Ere they be well wrapped in their winding-sheet!
Where I to thee eternity shall give,
When nothing else remaineth of these days,
And queens hereafter shall be glad to live
Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise.
Virgins and matrons, reading these my rhymes,
Shall be so much delighted with thy story
That they shall grieve they lived not in these times,
To have seen thee, their sex’s only glory:
So shalt thou fly above the vulgar throng,
Michael Drayton’s ode speaks to posterity, speaking to what
he believes is the likelihood that this fair woman will be remembered, gloried
and virtually worshipped as womanly perfection in ages yet to come by virtue of
his poem. The ladies who now clutter the streets “shall be forgotten” by poets
and this miss will be the envy of women of future elegant pretense because
Drayton’s directly addressed ideal is “their sex’s only glory”. A harsh judgment,
but it plays to vanity and a person’s feeling of being unjustly ignored. There
is resentment here to be exploited and Drayton’s technique, effective or not,
is a masterful piece of exploitation. It takes a man, after all, to make the
world aware of the genius of the woman who has taken his arm in companionship,
in romance, in matrimony. The woman is anonymous, a cipher without the right
man to make the powers that are innate in her bosom radiate fiercely, proudly,
for the world to praise and to cater to. “So shalt thou fly above the vulgar
throng,/Still to survive in my immortal song.”
This is to cleverly say that the woman will be remembered
forever because of the man’s immortal song, which is also to say that only a
man, this man, could have written. Without the man’s words, his voice, the
woman being seduced is unknown, without the power he extols in the lyric, which
is to say that she is without her own voice, bereft of even a language to command.
I rather like the wit and spare and adroit verbal sharpness that mark both of
these poems; graceful, preening, softly boasting and flattering the women to
whom they are addressed in terms that bestow qualities exceptional , unique,
miraculous to behold, these are the testimonies of horn dogs working their way
into a woman’s favor. And, perhaps, the respective beds they sleep in. Rather
classically, both these quick witted sonnets display less the feeling of
spontaneity , of genuine play, than they do the feeling of a well constructed
presentation, an argument mulled over, finessed and converted into a poeticized
template intended for the means of endearing oneself to women by appealing to
their perceived vanity. This makes you consider the old cartoon line when Olive
Oyle says to Popeye and Bluto , as they try to woo her , “I bet you say that to
all the girls.” The speakers, the wooers, the orators that profess the
unqualified beauty , brilliance, charm, grace and sublimity of their objects of
affection , deliver their testimonies with it in mind to present themselves in
an exceptional light; the sonnets are, in essence, sales pitches, imbuing the
speakers with qualities compatible with the ones they’ve ascribed to their
ladies dearest without so much as one self-glorified personal pronoun being
used in either of these artfully cantilevered proclamations. It’s a subtle
argument to be made that requires the most skillful of tongues, that the
qualities , the talents that are being attached to the would be betrothed have
not been noticed by the the rabble, the masses, those who live a penuric
existence, and that only the men who have broached and spoke to the subject of
the ladies beauty are intelligent, sensitive, caring, dynamic enough to speak
these truths. It is artful indeed, requiring a fine a balance, of knowing when
to let one’s voice trail off, to end on a soft syllable, awaiting a response.
This is bragging through the flattering of another. The intended audience, I’m
sure, is for an audience that considers itself literate and therefore possessed
of an elevated sensibility regarding what I think both these verses are about,
really, seduction. But we do have the experience , as readers, of getting a
vicarious thrill and find ourselves imagining to be the speaker in either poem,
no less than small boys imagine themselves to be a super hero with great powers
in the fight against immediate evil.
The works seduction both ways, upon the women who are
listening and to the readers who are literate and , we might assume, a tad shy
and less quicksilver in their effusions of love, honor, grace. It is a way of
being that readers, male overall, can fancy themselves as possessing their
object of desire (“object” being the operative term) taking ownership of a
would-be lover’s (sexual or courtly) self esteem because the virtues outlined
in these cleanly articulated metaphors and allusions would not have come to
mind and, further , would not have existed had not been for the innately
superior senses of the male. Even the women in the poems, the ones who stand
apart from others of their own gender, are chattel nonetheless. While I think
the function of the sonnets are morally insidious–this is a world where women
are lesser beings and have no selfhood, no definition in the absence of men who
control them–it is a kick to realize that it is the male of the readership who
is also being played with the sweetness of these words, in the words of
internet, “owned”.
By chattel , I mean to say that the women of this historical
period, even the ones singled out for plain-tho-generous praise in verse, are
considered property. From Merriam Webster’s On Line dictionary ” something
(such as a slave, piece of furniture, tool, etc.) that a person owns other than
land or buildings.” While I do believe that the real world sensibilities were a
saner as regards the treatment of women, but there is the tendency in cultures
dominated by the will, wishes, wiles and whinings of men to treat women as if
they were accessories, an extension of a man’s personality and little else. In
the grander rhetoric of love poems and protestations of virtues bordering on
sheer virtuosity, we realize that that the man who seeks to woo may as well be
talking to a car salesman as he describes the vehicle he’d like to drive off
the lot and bring home where he keeps his other stuff. On occasion I am of the
mind that love poems of the period were , in essence, projections of fragile
egos confronting a Hobbesian universe where life was nasty, brutish and short.
Again, this is a seduction that works in two different directions, to an
audience that wishes to think well of itself and the ability of their
cultivated readings and wit to make disruptive realities remain at bay, or at
least out of mind, and , of course, for the women addressed directly, bluntly
and yet with a spare poetry that resembles a truth the subject has denied. A
woman can indeed sing the verse for a man and have no real confusion as a
result if the situation were our current period, the here and right now.
It’s a
dubious proposition that a woman to man address , at least in what there was of
the public sphere, would have done well with a readership , or listenership, as
the case may be. Drayton’s verse survives because the word choices travel well
through the centuries and the changes in how the culture leans. So yes, a woman
may serenade a male with few changes to this lyric, but such was not always the
case. I have my doubts Drayton had adaptability on his mind when he wrote his
song; the constraints of songwriting likely had more to do with its gender-less
brevity. And yes, all seductions need willing partners for their to any kind of
dominant/submissive relationship, but we must remember all the same that it is
men writing these verses, not women, and that it is a world of moral, aesthetic
and philosophical imperatives that are created by generations of male poets. We
may turn all of this on its head all we may care to and say a is really y, but
that is really knee jerk deconstruction at best.