A professional actor admits stage fright in love in Sonnet 23
In Sonnet 23 the greatest wordsmith in English confesses that love leaves him tongue-tied. He compares himself to a nervous actor who forgets his lines and to a raging beast weakened by its own fury. His solution is striking: let his looks do the talking, and let his beloved learn to hear with eyes.
The first quatrain offers two comparisons for being overwhelmed. One is an imperfect performer whose fear knocks him out of his part. The other is some fierce creature so swollen with rage that the very abundance of its strength saps its heart. Both describe an excess that turns into weakness.
The speaker then applies the pictures to himself. Because he fears he will not be trusted, he forgets to recite the perfect ceremony of love's ritual, and under the weight of his own love's power he seems to wither. The paradox is neat: he fails to speak not because he feels too little but because he feels too much.
So he asks that his looks be his eloquence, silent heralds of what his heart would say, pleading for love and hoping for reward more effectively than any tongue that has said more, more often. The couplet turns the request into an instruction in reading: "O! learn to read what silent love hath writ: / To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit." Lovers, the poem proposes, must become interpreters of glances.
The theatrical opening was drawn from a life on stage. Sometime between 1585 and 1592 Shakespeare began a successful London career as an actor and writer, and he became a sharer, or part-owner, in the playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men. After James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English throne, the troupe took the name the King's Men. A poet who spent years watching colleagues dry up in performance knew exactly what the unperfect actor felt.
Source: Sonnet 23: As an unperfect actor on the stage
