Sonnet 18 and me

It's shameful for me to say ill of her. She did her darndest to make high school English a class we would find endearing. She was not some crypto-Nazi disciplinarian whose name--Goehring--defined her character. When I look back on her class so many years later, I have to admit she could have been worse. But we called her "Granny Goehring"--an indication of our estimation of her relevance to our lives.

That day, it was Shakespeare, the sonnets, the love sonnets in particular, Sonnet 18 specifically. And who could blame us anyway?--I mean, there was a ball game that night. I'm thinking Random Lake, but it could have been Howards or Plymouth, or Chilton--who knows any more? There was a game and the guys in the back, close to the door, me among 'em, were not one bit interested in Sonnet 18 or most anything Granny Goehring might have served up that morning, fourth period, senior English.

I don't remember exactly how it started because I wasn't listening, I was talking. I wasn't so much being disrespectful as I was dedicated to the day's vital task--preparing for that ball game. We were a fair-to-middlin' team, emphasis on middlin', but we were dedicated, and, if my memory serves me right, we were determined to win. The subject of senior English class that morning was the ball game that night. Granny Goehring was on Sonnet 18, but she was silver-haired irrelevance.

She'd likely taken a warning shot or two across the bow of our indifference before she took finally could tolerate no more and took close aim. When she did, she went after me, even though I'm quite sure the quarry could have been any of us. She wanted simply to break up the distraction. She loved Shakespeare and hated our disinterest. "Jim Schaap," she said, "I want you to take a seat up here at the front of the room."

If I'm not mistaken, she did more than point--she walked over to the desk and rapped its surface. She was irritated. It would take me another five years or so to understand why, but she wasn't playing around.

I don't think I was a "naughty kid." Distracted from Shakespeare's sonnets, or whatever the menu brought up that morning?--sure. Yes. We had a ball game, after all, and the old lady had no sense of its importance. She never went to ball games.

I didn't fight her demand. On my way up front, I walked slowly, at high-school hot shot pace, but not delinquent; I was following orders. I didn't try to fight or make a scene. I spilled my books on the desk up front, crawled into it, and opened my lit book. She let me know the page number, and then began in her immensely mimic-able sing-songy, utterly feminine voice besides.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:. . .

No one's memory is perfect, and what I have created of this story through the years may differ from whatever recording exists others may have in storage--if indeed anyone does; but it didn't take long for me to forge a course of action. It was her m.o. to take a couple of lines, stop, and create a question we might consider, and my behavior came as a revelation right then. I committed myself to do something I'd never, ever done in any English class--answer questions, not just one of them either--all of them! Answer them as if I was interested.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

"Class, what is Shakespeare referring to when he says "the eye of heaven."

Piece of cake. I'll get her goat by raising my hand and answering. Old lady'll be thrilled. I did, and she acknowledged it. "He's talking about the sun, Mrs. Goehring," I told her, maybe a bit like Eddie Haskell. The look on her face said it all. She was as shocked as she was pleased.

"And 'every fair from fair sometime declines'--what's he talking about there?" she asked that question to the rest of the class, but I was all in. I thrust my hand again into the discussion, with grunts for emphasis. I simply could not easily be avoided.\

"Yes, Jim," she said, and I went into what I thought would be a summary of what this guy, Shakespeare, had in mind about some really hot lady friend. "He loves her," I told Mrs. Goehring, or something to that effect. "As great as a summer day is, it's not going to be around forever and therefore not nearly so great as she is."

Years later, I would tell my own high school English classes that one key toward understanding Shakespeare's sonnets is that they're built in sonnets. In high school I had no clue about that, could have cared less.

Granny Goehring, now greatly pleased, went on:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

I get this, I told myself. I'm on to him. He is one lost lover. What he's saying is really kind of rich, that she's still alive wherever people read this poem. Summer days are sweet--sure; but this sweetie of his comes close to being eternal.

And there's this. Hold on to your seat. She's so beautiful or wonderful or sexy or hot or whatever, this guy says, that she'll never really die as long as people read about how beautiful or wonderful or sexy or hot she is.

What follows is what I'd learn to call that final couplet: two lines at the end that wrap up the package and get the job done.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Wow. Gob-smacked me right there in the middle of my chest. Get this: he says as long as people live, as long as they read over these very words, she'll be alive--in our imaginations, we'll still have her. Oh, my word, I thought.

So that day in senior English I kept answering questions, one after another, in part because I the answers to what Granny Goehring seemed so dang obvious, and in part because I knew the guys at the back of the room would be rolling in the aisles, me jabbering away up front about love poetry like some brain from the Honor Society.

But I had a sweet and pretty high school girlfriend, and we'd been a thing for some time even though she went to school down the road where our rivals quite regularly took us to task on the basketball floor. She was a cheerleader for our sworn enemies, but still, to me, a sweetheart whose bouncy little skirt, often as not, set my heart aflame. I knew love, or thought I did. I wasn't yet 18, but oh, my word, I understood that poem. I most certainly did. I just loved it.

I didn't say so, didn't tell my buddies from the team, who were greatly entertained by my antics that day. But I'd learned something that would, that day, change my life: I understood exactly what William Shakespeare says in Sonnet 18. Exactly, because in some podunk town in southeast Wisconsin, 400 years later, a bunch of bored ball players read through a poem that did exactly what the poet said he'd do--create some great lines that would make her divine. Wow.

The next day, fourth period, I had a choice: sit up front and acknowledge what had happened in my heart and soul, or sit in back. I sat in the back. 

No matter. Sonnet 18 had done irreparable damage and charmed the course of my life.