The Personae of the Muse in the Fair Youth Sonnets

Abstract

The figure of the Muse in Shakespeare’s sonnets, seemingly inconstant in its depiction, on a closer inspection, is revealed to be the signifier of a number of different entities, ones that are somewhat removed from concepts usually associated with the nine mythical Muses of Classical antiquity. These “personae,” or in other words, various manifestations or appearances of the Muse function in markedly different ways from each other and reveal the workings or the modus operandi of the Poet with regard to his endeavour of eternalising the Fair Youth’s beauty. The words of the Muse in sonnet 101 raise questions about the representational powers of pen vs. pencil, invoking the Renaissance paragone of poetry and painting, which leads to a number of enquiries concerning mimesis, invention, style, and Platonic realism. In my paper, I shall examine the forces and circumstances that shape the figure of the Muse, as well as what those forms could represent, in hopes of illuminating the poetic process of eternalisation in verse.