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SONNET 24Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'dThy beauty's form in table of my heart; My body is the frame wherein 'tis held, And perspective it is the painter's art. For through the painter must you see his skill, To find where your true image pictured lies; Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still, That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes. Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done: Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee; Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art; They draw but what they see, know not the heart. NOTES XXIV. Instead of the figurative exchange of hearts in xxii., the poet's breast is now a painter's studio, and his heart a tablet on which his sight has portrayed the form of his friend. And the poet is so truthful and sincere that the windows of his breast are the eyes of his friend, to whom the poet's heart is thus fully revealed. The concluding couplet would seem to indicate a doubt whether the friend's heart has been revealed with equal clearness. 1. Stell'd. Q. "steeld," the form of which maybe right. To "steel" is possibly, as I think the Rev. W. A. Harrison suggested, to write with a steel point or stylus; and so the word may come to have a more general sense of portraying or depicting. Cf. however, Lucrece, 1444, "To find a face where all distress is stell'd" (Q. "steld"), meaning evidently "portrayed" or "depicted." We cannot, however, infer from "held," line 3 in this Sonnet, that "stell'd" is the true form in line 1, pronunciation having so considerably changed. 8. The frame. That is, of the picture, or just possibly the painting-frame, or easel. Cf. T. Watson, Teares of Fancie (1593), Sonnet 46: "My Mistris seeing her faire counterfet 4. Perspective. As used here, the meaning of the word appears to be "capability of being looked through." But though this may be the sense immediately intended, there is a reference also to the ordinary employment of the word in relation to pictorial art, whether with respect to the representation of distance, or of a picture so designed as to require to be looked at obliquely. Cf. Richard II., Act ii. sc. 2, line 18 seq.: "Like perspectives, which, rightly gazed upon,5. Through the painter, &c. In the sense mentioned above. But there is probably an allusion, also, to the general necessity of taking the position occupied by an artist in painting a picture, so as to see, as it were, with his eyes. 11. Are windows -- where-through the sun. Notice the additional proof of sincerity. Not only are the friend's eyes windows to the poet's breast, seeing everything within, but the sun himself can look through. 14. Know not the heart. Intimating possibly a suspicion in accordance with the last lines of xxii. How to cite this article:______ Even More...  Stratford School Days: What Did Shakespeare Read? Games in Shakespeare's England [A-L] Games in Shakespeare's England [M-Z] An Elizabethan Christmas Clothing in Elizabethan England Queen Elizabeth: Shakespeare's Patron King James I of England: Shakespeare's Patron The Earl of Southampton: Shakespeare's Patron Going to a Play in Elizabethan London Ben Jonson and the Decline of the Drama Publishing in Elizabethan England Shakespeare's Audience Religion in Shakespeare's England Alchemy and Astrology in Shakespeare's Day Entertainment in Elizabethan England London's First Public Playhouse Shakespeare Hits the Big Time
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