SOURCE: “The Silent Speech of Shakespeare's Sonnets,” in Shakespeare and the Twentieth Century: The Selected Proceedings of the International Shakespeare Association World Congress, Los Angeles, 1996, edited by Jonathan Bate, Jill L. Levenson, and Dieter Mehl, University of Delaware Press, 1998, pp. 314-35.

In the following essay, originally presented in 1996, Wright maintains that Shakespeare’s sonnets to the young main introduced a new mode of poetic discourse.

Then others for the breath of words respect, Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect. 

—Shakespeare, Sonnet 85

O learn to read what silent love hath writ. 

—Shakespeare, Sonnet 23

Absence, Silence

O absent presence Stella is not here. 

—Sidney, Astrophel and Stella

He is not here. 

—Tennyson, In Memoriam

Non c'é. 

—Madama Butterfly

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