Department of English
Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
2202242 Introduction to the Study of English Poetry
Sonnet 54
(from Amoretti 1595)
Edmund Spenser
(1552 – 1599)
Of this worlds Theatre in which we stay, |
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My love lyke the Spectator ydly sits, | ||
Beholding me that all the pageants play, | ||
Disguysing diversly my troubled wits. | ||
Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits, | 5 | |
And mask in myrth lyke to a Comedy: | ||
Soone after when my joy to sorrow flits, | ||
I waile and make my woes a Tragedy. | ||
Yet she beholding me with constant eye, | ||
Delights not in my merth nor rues my smart: | 10 |
pities/hurt |
But when I laugh she mocks, and when I cry | ||
She laughes, and hardens evermore her hart. | ||
What then can move her? if nor merth nor mone, |
moan |
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She is no woman, but a sencelesse stone. |
Edmund Spenser |
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Links |
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Poem Notes
Amoretti: Italian for "little loves"
1 Of this worlds Theatre in which we stay: A favorite Renaissance theme derived in part from Lucian's Menippos and further popularized by Erasmus's Praise of Folly; cf. Shakespeare, As You Like It 2.7.139.
6 mask: Put on a mask; also, act in a masque, an elite entertainment with symbolic costumes or "guises." If the lover plays comedies when happy and tragedies when sad, his masks dramatize as much as they conceal.
9 with constant eye: Noteworthy in that women were often called inconstant; Elizabeth I defied the same stereotype with her motto semper eadem: "ever the same."
14 She is no woman, but a senceless stone: Some readers (e.g. Martz in pp. 804-9 in this Norton Critical Edition of Edmund Spenser's poetry) note in this sonnet a friendly wit that lightens the tone; the lover's seeming anger at his failure to move the lady may be more role-playing for her entertainment.
Reference
Edmund Spenser's Poetry: Authoritative Texts, Criticism. 3rd ed. Eds. Hugh Maclean and Anne Lake Prescott. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. 608-9. (The poem notes and some of the glosses are from this Norton Critical Edition)
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