Race, Gender and Class in Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Abstract

The most direct of the so-called “Dark Lady” sonnets, (127), (130), (131), and (132), contain such a powerful indictment of racism and sexism that they transcend their age and continue to retain their anti-racist, anti-sexist, impact and relevance until today. Shakespeare’s strong feminine figures of Rosalind, Portia, Cleopatra and Juliet, to name the most prominent, as well as his positive, sympathetic portrayal of the "weaker" feminine characters of Ophelia, Cordelia, and Desdemona, for example, should clear him of any charges of misogyny. The choice of the pair of lovers, whose seeming incompatibility enables them to overcome social and cultural prejudices, which establishes the framework for so many of Shakespeare’s plays, most prominently Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Much Ado about Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew, clearly also determines the poet’s relationship with the “Dark Lady” in The Sonnets.The group of sonnets, (25), (29), and (30), that achieve their strongest poetic impact in sonnet (29) (“When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes”), and the group of sonnets, (55), (64), (65), and (66), that reach the height of their poetic force in sonnet (66) (“Tired with all these for restful death I cry”), express a dissatisfaction with the human condition and a rejection of contemporary society that are central to our understanding of Shakespeare. Significantly, what seems to begin as an expression of the poet’s personal grievance and as a case of individual protest against life’s unfairness, and what seems to be a succession of poetic attempts at explaining the common theme of universal mortality and the inevitable effects of time, become a distinct and powerful expression of political protest and a deep rejection of the society of his time..