Chary Charity: Mother Love and Infant Need in Shakespeare's Sonnets

In scattered observations on Shakespeare's sonnets, C.L. Barber focuses on two roles or endeavors taken up by the sonneteer. On the one hand, Barber asserts, “many of Shakespeare's sonnets can be seen … as play aimed at evoking, by way of the young man, a sense of the original maternal presence” (Barber 1978, 36). The sonneteer, like certain of Shakespeare's romance heroes, seeks—and seems, at fleeting moments, to find—complete spiritual nourishment in the contemplation of a loved face. The poet's position, at such moments, is analogous to that of an infant feeding blissfully upon its mother's breast and/or gaze. At the same time, Barber asserts that the poet's primary stance is that of a cherishing parent (Barber , 190). The alleged coexistence of these reciprocal postures should disturb no one familiar with Shakespeare's imaginative ability to project himself into various human relationships. It is worth noting, however, that Shakespeare explores the way in which these roles coexist in an adult consciousness. In the love expressed in the sonnets, infantile longing is at the heart of parental cherishing; and the poet's awareness of this longing—of his own need—punctuates his verbal gift-giving with the recurring question “What is't but mine own when I praise thee?” (39.4).1

Barber bases his analysis of the sonnets on D.W. Winnicott's model of ego development. Winnicott uses the infant's exploration of the boundary between self and other as a paradigm for all subsequent object relations. A brief summary of this paradigm should clarify the way in which mature adult love is permeated with the experiences, longings, and strategies of infancy. According to Winnicott, the mother2 weans