Rebuttal to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 12
Danny Viewlock
If you feel that you ruminate over decay
Or lament that you’re no longer still in your prime,
Just remember this message when you rue the day
And you catch yourself cursing the passage of time:
When the flu’s got you snotty and feeling a mess,
Or your blood work results are not ready quite yet,
Or your interview’s now and you need to impress,
Or your speech is up next and you’re starting to sweat;
Then breathe easily, dear, on the day of the test,
Anytime you feel desperate, anxious or meek,
And console yourself knowing you’re doing your best
Even if all your options may seem rather bleak;
In the circle of life and all that vicey-versy,
Inevitability’s often a mercy.
Sonnet 12
William Shakespeare
When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
Did you have previous associations with this number before making this work?
The number 12 has so many different significances! It was tempting to do something related to clocks or baked goods, but the real direction I found came when I decided what kind of piece to write.
What inspired you to make this piece?
I'm not a poet. I write prose and plays and definitely not poetry. But I've been curious about trying it for a long time, even though I find it intimidating. Bait/Switch seems like a good environment for experimentation, so I decided to give it a shot. I wondered if a sonnet is a 12-line poem, so I looked it up. It's not. But while I was researching sonnets and the number 12, I came across Shakespeare's Sonnet 12. I read it. I disagreed with it. And I was moved to write a rebuttal, so there it was. I would write a Shakespearean sonnet to publicly beef with Shakespeare himself.
His sonnet was about how time is always passing, and youth is replaced by old age, and nothing lasts forever, and here are a bunch of examples of why that sucks. And the ending couplet says the one thing that makes it all okay is having a baby. That's the way to create youth and continue the circle of life or whatever. Me, I've very often found great solace from the knowledge that time is always passing. That's how I stay calm when I'm stressed. Like in a "This too shall pass" way. I just can't handle dread. So I put that in a sonnet, as faithfully as possible to Shakespeare's structure.
In his sonnets, the first eight lines do blah-blah-blah, and the following six lines do blah-blah-blah, and so I copied that. The ending couplet accomplishes A, B, and C, and so I copied that. The rhyme scheme was easy. Meter was the tricky part. Will stuck very closely to iambic pentameter, but to fit another 12 into my poem, I wrote mine in anapestic tetrameter, so the lines each have 12 syllables. Of course, I didn't know anything beyond haiku and limerick going into this piece, so this was all stuff I taught myself on a Sunday morning.
Aside from a response to this number, what does the work say to you now that you've made it?
My poem reminded me that I can learn new things! I wouldn't have undertaken a sonnet under other circumstances, and I'm really glad I tried it. It's not staggeringly brilliant and I'm not a poetic genius, but I went from being a person who didn't really know what a sonnet was, to someone who's written one. Is "balladeer" going on my CV? Well, it wouldn't be entirely untrue now, would it?
Danny Viewlock is a writer from Toronto. His essays have been published mostly in grimy little zines and his plays have been performed nowhere. His stint as editor of his high school newspaper was lauded as “brilliant” by his mother. This is his first poem.