Cracking the Sonnet Code

Anybody want to read 200 pages of PDF that claim to "crack the code" of Shakespeare's sonnets?  Maybe summarize for the rest of the class?  I don't have time for this.  Here's a sample:

In other sonnets, the doubled (and multiplied) code words may reveal new, autobiographical details, other identities, and evidence of Shakespeare's sense of humor and the depth of his language play. In addition, Sonnet 52 is found by the same doubled word and letter code to be a Summer Solstice sonnet. If we count back to Sonnet 1, we arrive at May first (our calendar). If we count ahead to Sonnet 126, we arrive at September third. If we assume that Sonnets 40 and 133 are contemporaries, both revealing when Will first admits that the youth and the dark lady are having an affair, we can give them both the date of June ninth. Then, Sonnet 127, the first dark lady sonnet, becomes June third (along with Sonnet 34), thus starting one possible twenty-eight day (14 times 2) lunar cycle within the 126 day (28 times 4.5) summer solar cycle of the youth's sequence. If any year is referred to, it might be 1592, but Shakespeare probably wrote and revised the Sonnets over the twenty-year period (1589—1609) that spans the main years of his wonderful career as a dramatist. A more complex view of this great sonnet sequence than any of us has to date is called for.

 

The author is Peter Jensen, Instructor of English at Linn-Benton Community College.  The link is directly to the PDF, I do not have a link to a hosting HTML page.

 

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