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08902_Field_TCGG T667.txt
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1996-04-10
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existences. Shakespeare’s inscribed sonnets in 1609 were “To
the onlie begetter . . . all happinesses and that eternitie
promised by our ever-living Poet, wisheth the well-wishing
adventurer in setting forth.”
The ever-living poet lives ever in print, that is, and
promises that eternity of the printed word (ever so much more
assured than the manuscript eternity of a message in a bottle)
to “the onlie begetter.” It is only proper that the identity of the
begetter should be as mysterious as the poetic process by
which the sonnets were created. Since, however, eternity is now
assured for the begetter as he sets forth on a new life of
printed poetic existence, the poet wishes him well, even as he is
wishing himself well, in his printed voyage through eternity. And
so follows the setting forth of (and in) the text of the sonnets,
just ten years after the Elizabethan sonnet vogue had passed.