Shall I compare thee

To attempt an interpretation is an impossibility. When I say "dog," I may be referring to a dog with one leg. Of course it has three crippled legs, all taped up and hobbling along like a pogo, it is. I am always referring to the specific dog, not some generalized, idealized concept or idea. An idea is a standard, a stereotype, a vague presentation, an absence, and an abstraction. It abstracts from the real and presents a mere part as the whole thing.

Shall I compare thee is a minted poem, a poem signified as a seduction, but a calm, restrained seduction. Some assume that it is a homosexual seduction based on one line. I will come back to this late. Some assume that it has a perfect balance, that it is a "temperate" poem, not exciting any extreme emotions.

There is certainly something charming about the verdant hills of golf courses, the zen strike of the golf ball, and the golfers dressed like estranged fencers. Perhaps the greenness of gold courses do express a perfect contentedness, a spiritual balance that is present in Psalm 23. But then, why is the cup overflowing like the wool of sheep?

Shall I?

Who is the I? Is it Shakespeare? OR is this a persona poem? I ask because Shakespeare, as the critics have construed and portraited him, is rather an impersonal, mysterious and unknowable person. "I" itself is a construct. "I" may be a mutiplicity changing with the course of time as in Odysseus. Odysseus is also a self-sacrificer, Odysseus is not only hateful of other but of himself. The name itself means to be hateful. Odysseus also represents artifice and wily wisdom, a feminine wisdom: THERFORE: his patron goddess is "Athena." Odysseus kills the Cyclops but this is referring to his desire to have "Achilles" sacrificed. Odysseus himself may be derived from Pre-Homeric themes related to Theognis of Megara, another proponent of a more versatile "I."

So who is the I? The I compares. The I compares to a summer's day. Shall I? Why Shall I? The author is asking the subject a "permission" to compare that subject to a summer's day. This poem is comparing a person to a season, SUMMER, a semiotic of signs and symbols once again knitted in the mind with beaches, picnics, drinking and more drinking, parties, and parties, and conversations and more conversations then wondering what we said, what we did, writing off our sins as being caused by drugs, alcohol, and generally emotions that climb up the stairs of consciousness and down the airs of consciousness. The I also deceives...

The I only sees what it wants to see. The Cyclops only see what they want to see. The subject is compared to a summer's day, just one day, and it is imagined as the perfect summer's day, but it is one day in the mind of Shakespeare, through the doors of which we see, what do we see, nothing but a labrynth, a Minoan labrynth in which a woman or boy may be sexually sacrificed to the God of his creativity if one takes a purely impersonal view of his ego.

One summer day, one perfect summer day within summer's lease. Well, if a woman hath plenty of doe from her husband and leads a leisure life, why shouldn't she be lovely and temperate? Take her doe away and her status away and she if she swims. This sense of "security" as in Othello's oracular proof is what gives the woman her sense of security. Take that away and you get, "Neither coral or ruby are her eyes" etc. etc. etc. To tell you the truth, Shakespeare bores me to death, but I interpret it right, maybe I'll like Shakespeare again. The only thing I like these days is rock and roll, and I'm not being a very good Christian. I don't find rock and roll particularily offensive though.

Where was I? Maybe she's not that great looking. In my experience, the good looking ones are always bitches, if not on the outside, the inside. Even if you take an ugly girl and tell her she's beautiful, sooner or later, she'll be even more bitchy than the pretty ones. You know what my problem is, I have an alterego that is a 13 year old Jewish girl. I don't know how this happened.

So here, the problem is, that Shakespeare's poem reminded me of a 13 year old Jewish girl who was murdered when I was 13. She is my alterego somehow.