Shakespeare's 458th Birthday

Mine eye hath played the painter, and hath steeled

Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;

My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,

And perspective it is best painter's art;

For through the painter must you see his skill,

To find where your true image pictured lies,

Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,

That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes:

Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:

Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me

Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun

Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;

  Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art:

  They draw but what they see, know not the heart.

Sonnet 24

Sonnet 24 is notoriously confusing, stretching a painting metaphor a bit beyond its elastic limit, although I suspect the printers are more to blame for this than our man Will. Delete "it" in line 4 for a start. And bear in mind that Sonnet 22 in the sequence has played with the conceit that the lover's and the poet's hearts have swapped places. All clear? Well, not quite... As Don Paterson says in his commentary: "Shakespeare is the least incompetent writer who ever lived, but if ever a poem died a fashion-victim to the Elizabethan conceit, this is it". Harsh, Don, harsh. It's actually one of my favourites, a photographer's sonnet avant la lettre if ever there was one.