SOURCE: "The Voices and the Audience in Shakespeare's Sonnets," The Tension of the Lyre: Poetry in Shakespeare's Sonnets, Huntington Library, 1981, pp. 1-12.

In the following essay. Smith draws on the writings of T. S. Eliot to show how the voice heard in the sonnets is directed both toward itself—in the form of a soliloquy or meditation—and toward an audience—the Friend, for example, but also posterity.

T. S. Eliot maintained that there are three voices of poetry. "The first voice," he said, "is the voice of the poet talking to himself—or to nobody. The second is the voice of the poet addressing an audience, whether large or small. The third is the voice of the poet when he attempts to create a dramatic character speaking in verse."¹ With the third voice we have nothing to do in considering the sonnets, though of course it is...