Nobody understands Shakespeare’s Sonnet 107.
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Suppos’d as forfeit to a cónfin’d doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d.
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh; and Death to me subscribes,
Since spite of him I’ll live in this poor rhyme
While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes:And thou in this shalt find thy monument
When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.
The Ingram & Redpath edition of the Sonnets cites seven (!) academic interpretations of line five (perhaps the prettiest of the poem): “The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d”.
Here are the various theories of what the “eclipse” of “the mortal moon” might stand for:
(a) the Spanish Armada […]
(b) the Queen’s Grand Climacteric […]
(c) the Queen’s illness […]
(d) Essex’s rebellion […]
(e) the Queen’s death […]
(f) a lunar eclipse […]
(g) an eclipse of the Queen’s favour […]
I find it plausible that the Bard of Avon slipped a few double-entendres about Queen Elizabeth’s menopause into 107. But, to me, this sonnet is first and foremost about love.
Moon cycles come and go. The moon is mortal—it wanes every month. But the moon is immortal, too—it’s reborn again and again, waxing with the tides.
You never feel like you could fall in love again, and yet you do. The pessimists, the haters, “the sad augurs” will be proven wrong. And your love will look fresh, and it will feel like death itself has submitted to you.