The Master-Mistress: A study of Shakespeare's sonnets - James Winny

Here is a new interpretation of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which sees them neither as fictional nor as private autobiography. In Mr Winny’s view they follow the course of an imaginative colloquy, in which Shakespeare tries to resolve the form of concepts which are both his subject-matter and the source of his impulse to create. In his examination of the poet’s relations with a young man who repeatedly frustrates the hope of permanent friendship, Mr Winny draws attention to the element of dualism that runs through Shakespeare’s work, and argues that the meaning of the Sonnets must finally be sought in this concern with dualistic figures. If Shakespeare has any place in the Sonnets, the author concludes, ‘he is not the poet alone but both figures, who are to be seen as positive and negative forms of the same divided self’. By looking for an explanation of the Sonnets within Shakespeare’s work, rather than in historical events, the author of The Master-Mistress has opened the way to a fuller appreciation of their significance; and has brought within reach a critical understanding of the creative process in Shakespeare.