That God forbid, that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand th’ account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!
O, let me suffer (being at your beck),
Th’ imprison’d absence of your liberty;
And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check,
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list, your charter is so strong
That you yourself may privilege your time
To what you will; to you it doth belong
Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.
I am to wait, though waiting so be hell;
Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.
AG: There’s another one that’s a slave one too – (Sonnet) 58 – They’re interesting. They’re naked, completely open -“That God forbid…”.. “That God forbid that made me first your slave,” (he’s praising God about it! -that’s the next sonnet) – “That God forbid, that made me first your slave” (Sonnet 58) – “That God forbid, that made me first your slave/I should in thought control your times of pleasure”, (So, god forbid that my thoughts should attempt to control your times of pleasure. You control mine but I can’t control yours – Has anybody ever been in this relationship? – I have any number of times. I don’t know if its universal but..)… – “Or at your hand th’ account of hours to crave/Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!/O, let me suffer (being at your beck),/Th’ imprison’d absence of your liberty;/And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check/Without accusing you of injury./ Be where you list, your charter is so strong/ That you yourself may privilege your time/To what you will; to you it doth belong/Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime/I am to wait, though waiting so be hell;/Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.”
(So he’s really down at the bottom, totally abased, totally completely given-over. And it’s amazing that anybody could write so clearly about it. And, what’s even more amazing is that this Sonnet-sequence has been accepted in English-language history as being the height of sublimity of human psychology, that everybody agrees this is for real, what people are really like. So almost as much.. even more so than they do (Walt) Whitman. I mean everybody, even the most conservative, reactionary William Buckley professor says, ” Yes, Shakespeare – these (are) secrets of the human heart – “What oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed’ – So it really cuts deep into people’s image of what a social man or woman is supposed to be like (because it really undercuts everything, it’s really, totally, truthful). And it turns out that (there’s) some element of this.. love crush slavery is.. seems to be..are… historically universal in some way, in one form or another (in other words, everybody’s kinky, or “Everybody’s got a big dong!” (as Larry Rivers said to Jack Kerouac). So.. or, “Everybody’s a funny twat!” – Anyway, Shakespeare seems to have hit it directly here – and made a whole record (like complete accounting record) of the entire cycle of, apparently, a very rewarding love-affair (or something that happened to him that he liked anyway)….
to be continued
[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately forty-four-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately forty-seven-and-a-half minutes in]