ABSTRACT
When Shakespeare in Sonnet CVII says, “The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,” we do not know what he means. There are many theories, as with the sonnets generally. He could be referring to the defeat in 1588 of the Spanish Armada, which sailed in a crescent formation. He could be alluding to Queen Elizabeth, the chaste Diana. In that case there are two meanings of “endured” to consider. If it means “lived through,” she survived her dangerous “climacteric” year when she became sixty-three in 1596; or she survived a dangerous illness in 1599, or the Essex rebellion of 1601. If “eclipse” means death, that took place March 24, 1603. Or should we look for an eclipse of the real moon, called “mortal” for suffering it: the total eclipse of 1595? Shakespeare knew what he meant—it goes without saying—but he was not writing for the public; he did not intend his sonnets to be published. They were circulated in manuscript “among his private friends.” Topical allusions for the most part had to be discreet, references to the Queen guarded: otherwise one could go to jail. Writing sonnets was a cryptic game, anyway, as the connoisseurs knew.
